Is mapping for Doom 3 dead?

[hardcore_gamer]

I remember making 3 maps for Doom 3 and uploading them to filefront many years ago. I recently started playing some Doom 3 again and decided to download some user maps, only I discovered to my horror that filefront where I use to download most of my Doom 3 content has shut down. Not only that, but Doom3world which played a key role in allowing me to learn doom 3 mapping is also dead. Only place I know about now that has lots of doom 3 content is DoomWadstation, which hasn't been updated in years

So, does this mean that doom 3 modding is basically dead?

EDIT: I tried starting the doom 3 level editor but for some reason the mouse is bugged. Any idea how to fix this?

[Archi]

Launch the game in windowed mode without anti-aliasing. That must help.

[snapshot]

It isn't dead, It's just not very active, there are still few mapping projects around, most of them are uploaded on Moddb, check them out :

Doom Reborn :
http://doomreborngame.com/

Mars City Security, an update is planned soon, it will include more levels devil said :
http://www.moddb.com/mods/mars-city-security

PHANTASM Beyond II The NeverDead :
http://www.moddb.com/mods/phantasm-beyond-ii-the-neverdead

EvilLab :
http://www.moddb.com/mods/evillab

Hallowed Mod (one of my favorites) :
http://www.hallowedmod.com/

[geX]

You forgot http://www.moddb.com/mods/phobos/ ;)

[Pencil of Doom]

Not dead, but not very active either, mostly because mapping for Doom 3 isn't easy to map for as classic doom, so there is that, but on the bright side, there's plenty of mods for D3.

[Marnetmar]

I'd argue it was never alive to begin with. The tools are simply too inaccessible for anyone to be willing to put their time into using.

Consider that Phobos, an 8 level episode for Doom 3, has been in development for as much time as Black Mesa.

[Spectre01]

Marnetmar said:

I'd argue it was never alive to begin with. The tools are simply too inaccessible for anyone to be willing to put their time into using.

Consider that Phobos, an 8 level episode for Doom 3, has been in development for as much time as Black Mesa.

I remember being so stoked in 2004 at all the potential great custom single player projects that would be created for D3. Was actively following the community for the next two years, played RoE, but never saw any "Legendary 5/5" mapsets.

Speaking of Black Mesa, that was also the only custom HL2 campaign that I've enjoyed. Classic Doom is probably the only game I've played where user content exceeds the quality of the original.

[snapshot]

J.B.R said:

Not dead, but not very active either, mostly because mapping for Doom 3 isn't easy to map for as classic doom, so there is that, but on the bright side, there's plenty of mods for D3.

add that to the fact that most players don't map for Doom 3 just because they think it's useless, Since there's not as many players playing it as other games .

(MAPPING FOR DOOM 3 ? EH, SUCH DOOMED GAME, I'D RATHER WASTE MY TIME MAPPING FOR SOMETHING ELSE THAT PEOPLE WOULD CHECK) .

[Tetzlaff]

Making singleplayer maps is always worth the effort, because there will always be someone who will play and appreciate your map.

Making multiplayer maps for an older game is an entirely different thing though.

[Shaviro]

Marnetmar said:

I'd argue it was never alive to begin with. The tools are simply too inaccessible for anyone to be willing to put their time into using.

Actually, the Doom3 modding community was alive and well in the early years. What killed it was the slow mass suicide on Doom3world where people insisted on trying to force the engine to do things it wasn't at all geared towards. People were fanatic in the sense that they couldn't accept that other game engines could do certain things better than Doom3. Later on D3W basically became the circle-jerk proving grounds for engine and high-res texture mods.

Doom3 mapping isn't really inaccessible. The editor is pretty good all in all. There are no advanced modeling features, but the editor's approach towards building things is almost serene in its simplicity.

Marnetmar said:

Consider that Phobos, an 8 level episode for Doom 3, has been in development for as much time as Black Mesa.

Well, there's a lot more to the project than 8 levels. Black Mesa *is* the bigger project, but the scopes of the two aren't that far apart. On top of that we practically restarted the thing in 2009 after some very troubled years and since then it has (more or less) been a 3-man project. Not that I'm arguing it isn't taking a looooong time to build, but making a standalone, single, medium-sized level for Doom3 isn't as humongous a task as some might think.

[hardcore_gamer]

The biggest problem with making Doom 3 maps is mostly about 2 things:

1. It takes forever to add details to maps if you want to get anywhere near the quality of the original maps. One of Doom 3's biggest features were the super detailed levels and advanced lighting. Too bad that it takes huuuuuuuge amounts of time actually manually building all of that. Because Doom 3 goes for the realistic art style rather than an abstract art style like the original Doom trying to make more simplistic looking levels just makes them look like a piece of crap.

2. You had to set up visportals throughout your levels in order to manually control which areas of the level are being rendered. Otherwise the game will just render literally the whole level at once resulting in massive lag. I remember this being a very annoying and a rather tedious process.

Basically Doom 3 wasn't that friendly for people who just wanted to casually create maps. It's a shame, because the editing tools were fairly powerful.

[Deleted_Account]

It's not dead yet, but it's on life support.

[printz]

Shaviro said:

Actually, the Doom3 modding community was alive and well in the early years. What killed it was the slow mass suicide on Doom3world where people insisted on trying to force the engine to do things it wasn't at all geared towards. People were fanatic in the sense that they couldn't accept that other game engines could do certain things better than Doom3. Later on D3W basically became the circle-jerk proving grounds for engine and high-res texture mods.

When I registered on that board I was met with quite an indifference on classic map editing, people preferring to talk about rendering mods and such experiments.

[printz]

hardcore_gamer said:

2. You had to set up visportals throughout your levels in order to manually control which areas of the level are being rendered. Otherwise the game will just render literally the whole level at once resulting in massive lag. I remember this being a very annoying and a rather tedious process.

Is there no algorithmic way to automate that? If I remember correctly, visportals are brushes placed on doors (since Doom 3 bases are mostly made of connected rooms, as expected). What about a postprocessor that generates visportals?

Doom 3 modding hasn't been active enough to attract enough programmers to make things easy, I guess. Contrast with Doom 2 where we have this huge GZDoomBuilder/plugins and SLADE activity -- let alone ZDoom. Maybe one day GZDoom becomes like Doom 3, except easy to mod for.

[Shaviro]

Personally I don't find the visportal process all that tedious or testing. Perhaps that's because I've worked with it for a million years, but I do think I have the process down so it gets easier. What we do on Phobos is as follows:

1. Piece the level together with whatever rooms and areas we have built.
2. Seal the map. This is where we go through everything looking for leaks. The Pointfile function here is your friend. This process can get tedious and often go on for hours for levels the size of ours. It's easy though. Put on some nice music and transcend into the process.
3. Add visportals. They generally go between doors or L shaped hallways. Once you have properly sealed the map, adding visportals is over in a matter of minutes. Fine tuning will of course take place over the course of testing the map.

printz said:

When I registered on that board I was met with quite an indifference on classic map editing, people preferring to talk about rendering mods and such experiments.

Yep. It's fair if that's what they truly cared about, but it was very discouraging to always be brushed off as a level content maker there. It doesn't have to be a back-patters' alliance, but d3w is where Phobos received the least and most useless feedback. When you get more feedback on moddb and somewhat unrelated websites than you do on the community's core website - you know that community is doomed.

[Gzegzolka]

Yes it is dead for a few years, it was dead when I join doom3world, it was dead when that site went offline, and it's still dead. I told it from point of person who like to play Doom3 and have no idea how to create mods but like playing them.
It's not dead like "totally dead and forgotten". It's just not as much active as half-life 2/fallout/skyrim community. From time to time someone pops-up with interesting map or mod, few of them see the daylight and are released, few of them become abandoned. Doom3 mapping is more alive than for example F.E.A.R. community.

[snapshot]

Gzegzolka said:

Yes it is dead for a few years, it was dead when I join doom3world.

Incorrect, i remember a lot of custom maps uploaded to Doom3world forums and Doom 3 Filefront page , there are even few that are still recieving updates, and some new ones on Moddb .