The Level Designer's Idea Tank

[NEANDERTHAL]

I thought it'd be a good idea to have a sort of "brain room" of ideas/techniques that we level designers use/have. Sort of a place to get some inspiration when you get mapper's block, and give back by posting about any ideas you come up with yourself.


An idea I had while making one of my maps is having the player fight monsters while on an E2M3-style 87 Floor Move Up and Down grid. It made for a great fight against some flying monsters, and it might make for some chaotic projectile fights as well. Action 87 is real cool, because it takes moving sectors, a place where you'd expect order, and makes them move with a monster-like chaos. I guess that's why there's a guts texture on them in E2M3.

Another idea I had was to make a bunch of rooms right next to each other w/ a lot of obstacles and cover, and then drop the walls dividing them to create a boss arena.

[Memfis]

Do we know any maps where instead of keys you have to look for radiation suits? You need them to cross large sections of 20% damage lava, for example.

[BigDickBzzrak]

I was thinking of a map whose first room is FULL of AVs/Barons/whatever, but they're turned the opposite of you (you see their backs). Right behind you is a switch that triggers a crusher that kills all of those. Sounds dumb, but imagine the psychological impact you'd get when you see all those monsters lined up!

Also, in an upcoming map of mine, there is a linedef that starts a crusher dummy sector that crushes 150 barrels, and at the same time some rocks drop from the ceiling. Despite the ceilings being slow as hell (the map is for vanilla), it's a very cool effect IMHO. I think I got the idea for this from UAC_DEAD.WAD, but it didn't have the explosion!

NEANDERTHAL said:

Another idea I had was to make a bunch of rooms right next to each other w/ a lot of obstacles and cover, and then drop the walls dividing them to create a boss arena.

I've seen this in

Spoiler

2sectors.wad, dunno which map

[ella guro]

just replying to say this is a good idea for a thread. will post later when i come up with things.

[glenzinho]

Memfis said:

Do we know any maps where instead of keys you have to look for radiation suits? You need them to cross large sections of 20% damage lava, for example.

Map 10: Skagway from UAC Ultra has that extensive "poisonous" outdoor area that requires the radsuit run. I haven't seen this kind of easy to apply concept used much.

[40oz]

Project Ideas I thought of but will probably never get to:

1. Castle Invasion mapset where each level is a different part of a giant castle. A gatehouse level, a map for each of the towers, a super courtyard, etc. The levels would be generally shaped like the part of the castle they represent but would be large and labyrinthine and full of puzzles

2. Perditions Gate Reanimation: Perditions Gate themed collaboration community project where mappers volunteer to work in one of three stages. S1 is to create a deathmatch layout, s2 creates a single player level on top of that layout, s3 is mostly texture alignment and bugtesting and stuff. I later scrapped the idea to start Mutiny instead.

3. Doom Unlimited: a community project megawad where I write a name, description, and range of limitations for each map. The map can only have these types of monsters, must include only these weapons, must have 3-6 secrets, must use these texture themes, etc.

4. Doom maps with perfectly symmetrical layouts that use texturing, lighting, height variation and thing placement to make them seem not symmetrical

5. Dead Zones, short episode project of maps that dont use the grid.

6. Some kinda renaissance folk fantasy-land community project akin to Mutiny that uses bricks and stained glass and heretic look-alike textures I would make for castles, monasteries and villages and stuff.

7. Some kinda Plutonia Experiment short episode look alike with darkened swampy versions of known Plutonia textures and a green sky. Idk I had a dream about it once and I never got around to it.

8. My own version of DTWiD

9. A slaughtermap pack just to prove to myself that I can do it

I hope some day I can manage or contribute heavily to a project in such a way that looks "professional" if that makes any sense. I'm kinda bored with "mixed bag" community projects and would like to make something that seems like a true sequel to Doom, or at least authentic in a way that touches that sweet spot that Final Doom, or The Master Levels or Perditions Gate or Hell to Pay does. I want to participate in something where we have a drawing board and decide on what we want our Doom wad to be like in the same way game designers must have back in the 90s. The "hey I have a wad idea" project thread approach isn't really doing it for me. Im not sure that will ever really happen either.

[NEANDERTHAL]

bzzrak said:

I was thinking of a map whose first room is FULL of AVs/Barons/whatever, but they're turned the opposite of you (you see their backs). Right behind you is a switch that triggers a crusher that kills all of those. Sounds dumb, but imagine the psychological impact you'd get when you see all those monsters lined up!

Even better-- what if you set up the linedefs to telefrag the monsters with a spider-mastermind or other large monster once the player leaves the room. Imagine leaving the room, only to hear a thousand monster screams and a deafening squeal as the door closes behind you, allowing you to narrowly escape death. Later in the map, you come back to the room to find a spider mastermind chilling atop a pile of blood and bodies!

[glenzinho]

This would be great, except for the fact that the Spiderdemon wouldn't even teleport in due to the monsters blocking its path. Maybe in ZDoom or with some deh trickery it may be possible, but not in the normal behaviour. It would be awesome though.

[scifista42]

Monsters can't telefrag other monsters, but you could teleport in lots of barrels in between the monsters that would explode and kill the monsters, then teleport in the Spider Mastermind or whatever.

[glenzinho]

Fucken ay sci, top idea

[CaptainManiac]

Why not a map where the player can roam freely and kill monsters and accompish objectives and after every objective accomplished the exut to unlock and the player to end the map

[NEANDERTHAL]

Another cool trick I remember, from the finale of Monster Hunter Inc.:
You have concentric rings of floors, each walled by the side of the ceiling of the next ring; when the player is finished fighting the monsters in a ring, the floor of the ring and the floors of the rings inside it lower the the floor of the next ring, revealing more monsters and making the arena larger as the fight progresses.

[SaladBadger]

scifista42 said:

Monsters can't telefrag other monsters, but you could teleport in lots of barrels in between the monsters that would explode and kill the monsters, then teleport in the Spider Mastermind or whatever.

Aren't you able to work around this by setting the map to be on MAP30? I believe MAP30 has an exception that lets anything telefrag since the boss spawner works by spawning in a monster and then teleporting it to its proper location.

[Yousuf Anik]

IDK if this is a good idea, making such catwalks that are very hard to pass (you have to be very careful) but if you fall down to 10-20% damaging lava floor, there's no escape, I mean no teleporter that can bring you back to the starting point which means you die.

[NEANDERTHAL]

InsanityBringer said:

Aren't you able to work around this by setting the map to be on MAP30? I believe MAP30 has an exception that lets anything telefrag since the boss spawner works by spawning in a monster and then teleporting it to its proper location.

I think that only monster spawned via the boss mechanism don't avoid telefrag. Monsters spawned by other means on MAP30 still follow the same rules. Following that logic, you'd either have to modify the Boss Eye to spawn S.M.'s or group the monsters really close together and pray for a mancubus.

[glenzinho]

Or listen to scifista

[SaladBadger]

NEANDERTHAL said:

I think that only monster spawned via the boss mechanism don't avoid telefrag. Monsters spawned by other means on MAP30 still follow the same rules. Following that logic, you'd either have to modify the Boss Eye to spawn S.M.'s or group the monsters really close together and pray for a mancubus.

Actually, it does work for anything teleporting on MAP30. here's a demo map

[Quineotio]

40oz said:

I hope some day I can manage or contribute heavily to a project in such a way that looks "professional" if that makes any sense. I'm kinda bored with "mixed bag" community projects and would like to make something that seems like a true sequel to Doom, or at least authentic in a way that touches that sweet spot that Final Doom, or The Master Levels or Perditions Gate or Hell to Pay does. I want to participate in something where we have a drawing board and decide on what we want our Doom wad to be like in the same way game designers must have back in the 90s. The "hey I have a wad idea" project thread approach isn't really doing it for me. Im not sure that will ever really happen either.

Be patient :)

[illuknisaa]

I have this "stealth" gameplay idea where the player tries to sneak behind a cyber demon while avoiding low level enemies.

The setup is that cyber walks in a corridor so that it has it's back to the player. Player also gets harassed by melee enemies so the player kinda gets sandwiched between cyber and other monsters.

I've been wanting to utilize stealth mechanics(using fists won't alert monsters and you can put a silencer on a pistol) and items (like mines) you see in project brutality.

[ella guro]

40oz said:

I hope some day I can manage or contribute heavily to a project in such a way that looks "professional" if that makes any sense. I'm kinda bored with "mixed bag" community projects and would like to make something that seems like a true sequel to Doom, or at least authentic in a way that touches that sweet spot that Final Doom, or The Master Levels or Perditions Gate or Hell to Pay does. I want to participate in something where we have a drawing board and decide on what we want our Doom wad to be like in the same way game designers must have back in the 90s. The "hey I have a wad idea" project thread approach isn't really doing it for me. Im not sure that will ever really happen either.

i somewhat agree with this. i do appreciate the variety in mixed bag wads and that makes me play them more than than solo wads, which can get monotonous in design. in community wads there's that element of surprise, and designers who might be doing something crazy. it would be nice to have something that combines both the variety of grabbag community sets but still be cohesive as an experience. one of the reasons i always talk about ALT.wad is it manages to have a pretty well-told story and be a community project at the same time. like one big touch i really like there is that one map usually feels like it goes into the next one pretty naturally. like if there's a techbase level going into a sci-fi level, the end of the techbase level will have a sci-fi-ish section in it. it's touches like that that definitely keep me playing, because i always want to see what's going to happen next. i would like to see more sets do that.

[joe-ilya]

An optional explosive trap you can activate on passing-by monsters by putting a switch that blows up a dynamite (barrel) for you and they're connected by a rope.

A map with windy outdoors.

A map descending into the earth's inner metal sphere through a red hot lava base-like tunnel going through the lava.

A map on the sun.

A map where you hop from an astroid to another astroid on an astroid belt floating in space.

A boom compatible springboard that instantly rises you and pushes you real hard over an/a edge/gap/wall.

Switcheroom 3 where you take UDOOM maps and put them in DOOM II wherever you want, some will have to be left out, but that's OK.

[CaptainManiac]

Linear map where you can make a mine that descents to the Earth,s Core.Like Jules Verne's Travel to the Center of the Earth
Big map with objectives to accomplish in order to reach the exit,with many weapons and enemies to kill,spread on the map and the objectives to be accomplished in any order
Funny labyrinth map where you need to open many doors in order to reach the exit and of course,to have monsters to kill and weapons
Just an Icon Boss map to beat for fun
Good Gothic style map with linear environment