any cool tips?

[Bread Knight]

ok so im pretty new to the gzdoom buildin scheme. but i know how to use it, any cool tips that you guys have that could either help make my map cooler/funner or just things to boost workflow. litterally any tips you got will help.


<3 love ya all

[MinerOfWorlds]

I like making the sectors first then things.

[BigDickBzzrak]

These threads pop up every once in a while and there's always so much wisdom in every single one of them.
My tips:
1. Never, ever make slaughtermaps.
2. Make your maps truly YOUR maps. Throw in pointless gimmicks. Annoy the player deliberately. Don't give a damn about your player. Why? Because you CAN. Make a map that you would play.
3. Less is more, when it comes to monsters. 4 Imps and 4 shotgun shells is infinitley better that 9000 Imps and 9000 shells.
4. It's always cool when there's a secret (or not so secret) area that leads to an early area of the map.
5. Secrets are cool as a whole.
6. Copy cool ideas from other maps. But don't go too far with that, just adapt something you liked to your map.
7. Have a bunch of toilets and sector furniture and text written with sectors to piss off perfectionists.
8. Doom 2 sucks, map for Ultimate Doom. Your map will definitely be free of Revenants, Chaingunners and Mancubuses, which is awesome.
9. Never use the E1M1 music in your map. It just makes it feel like some sort of 1995 shovelware CD whatever.
10. Always try to use the least advanced port possible. If you have a Boom-compatible map but there's a single slope in a secret in a secret, throw it out. Some people (like me) are more likely to play your map if it's Boom compatible.
11. On the subject, if your map is for vanilla, test in Chocolate Doom. If it's limit-removing, test in Crispy Doom or PrBoom+ -complevel 2. If it's Boom-compatible, make sure that it works in PrBoom+ -complevel 9.
12. If you're in a mapping block and you can't think of anything concrete, just start doodling random shapes.
---------------------
but I suck at making maps, therefore don't obey rules 1-8 and you'll be fine.

[Bread Knight]

bzzrak said:

These threads pop up every once in a while and there's always so much wisdom in every single one of them.
My tips:
1. Never, ever make slaughtermaps.
2. Make your maps truly YOUR maps. Throw in pointless gimmicks. Annoy the player deliberately. Don't give a damn about your player. Why? Because you CAN. Make a map that you would play.
3. Less is more, when it comes to monsters. 4 Imps and 4 shotgun shells is infinitley better that 9000 Imps and 9000 shells.
4. It's always cool when there's a secret (or not so secret) area that leads to an early area of the map.
5. Secrets are cool as a whole.
6. Copy cool ideas from other maps. But don't go too far with that, just adapt something you liked to your map.
7. Have a bunch of toilets and sector furniture and text written with sectors to piss off perfectionists.
8. Doom 2 sucks, map for Ultimate Doom. Your map will definitely be free of Revenants, Chaingunners and Mancubuses, which is awesome.
9. Never use the E1M1 music in your map. It just makes it feel like some sort of 1995 shovelware CD whatever.
10. Always try to use the least advanced port possible. If you have a Boom-compatible map but there's a single slope in a secret in a secret, throw it out. Some people (like me) are more likely to play your map if it's Boom compatible.
11. On the subject, if your map is for vanilla, test in Chocolate Doom. If it's limit-removing, test in Crispy Doom or PrBoom+ -complevel 2. If it's Boom-compatible, make sure that it works in PrBoom+ -complevel 9.
12. If you're in a mapping block and you can't think of anything concrete, just start doodling random shapes.
---------------------
but I suck at making maps, therefore don't obey rules 1-8 and you'll be fine.

lol thanks for the help <3

[Quagsire]

I have one thing to share with you just. If you ever feel a block of any kind (mapper's block, artist's block, etc) then try to think of a less common concept you can get behind easier.

[dt_]

I think the best thing I discovered about DB was one of the most basic- you can highlight a textured wall and/or flat in 3d mode, ctrl+c, and use mouse3 to instantly click paste that texture on walls or floors in 3d mode. This probably cut map making times almost in half for me, and I can't believe I didn't just look properly at the controls and features years ago

[baja blast rd.]

bzzrak said:

These threads pop up every once in a while and there's always so much wisdom in every single one of them.
My tips:
1. Never, ever make slaughtermaps.
2. Make your maps truly YOUR maps. Throw in pointless gimmicks. Annoy the player deliberately. Don't give a damn about your player. Why? Because you CAN. Make a map that you would play.
3. Less is more, when it comes to monsters. 4 Imps and 4 shotgun shells is infinitley better that 9000 Imps and 9000 shells.
4. It's always cool when there's a secret (or not so secret) area that leads to an early area of the map.
5. Secrets are cool as a whole.
6. Copy cool ideas from other maps. But don't go too far with that, just adapt something you liked to your map.
7. Have a bunch of toilets and sector furniture and text written with sectors to piss off perfectionists.
8. Doom 2 sucks, map for Ultimate Doom. Your map will definitely be free of Revenants, Chaingunners and Mancubuses, which is awesome.
9. Never use the E1M1 music in your map. It just makes it feel like some sort of 1995 shovelware CD whatever.
10. Always try to use the least advanced port possible. If you have a Boom-compatible map but there's a single slope in a secret in a secret, throw it out. Some people (like me) are more likely to play your map if it's Boom compatible.
11. On the subject, if your map is for vanilla, test in Chocolate Doom. If it's limit-removing, test in Crispy Doom or PrBoom+ -complevel 2. If it's Boom-compatible, make sure that it works in PrBoom+ -complevel 9.
12. If you're in a mapping block and you can't think of anything concrete, just start doodling random shapes.
---------------------
but I suck at making maps, therefore don't obey rules 1-8 and you'll be fine.

Mix of very good advice (#2, #5, #6, #7, #11, and #12) and bzzrak's advice for bzzrak advice (#1, #3, #8). I wouldn't recommend anyone else follow those three.

[The_SloVinator]

dt_ said:

I think the best thing I discovered about DB was one of the most basic- you can highlight a textured wall and/or flat in 3d mode, ctrl+c, and use mouse3 to instantly click paste that texture on walls or floors in 3d mode. This probably cut map making times almost in half for me, and I can't believe I didn't just look properly at the controls and features years ago

Holy crap! I didn't know this either till you mentioned it. Shit, now it will make mapping a hell of a lot easier!

[Bauul]

Soldier993 said:

Holy crap! I didn't know this either till you mentioned it. Shit, now it will make mapping a hell of a lot easier!

Combined with the auto-align X and auto-align Y keyboard shortcuts (which I changed to E and Shift-E respectively on mine, can't remember what they are by default unfortunately!) it makes texturing easy. Just set up one wall perfectly then:

Visual mode, select wall
Ctrl-C
Select all the other walls
Middle mouse button
Point at first wall again
E
Shift-E

Sorted!

[boris]

dt_ said:

I think the best thing I discovered about DB was one of the most basic- you can highlight a textured wall and/or flat in 3d mode, ctrl+c, and use mouse3 to instantly click paste that texture on walls or floors in 3d mode. This probably cut map making times almost in half for me, and I can't believe I didn't just look properly at the controls and features years ago

In GZDB you can press shift-mouse3 to paste the texture to all connected lines with the same texture.

[Gamer With Dignity]

You want a cool tip? Dip it in some ice water.

[Spectre01]

The best advice posted here is to make the map(s) that you want to make instead of mapping for "wide appeal" or whatever. Don't stick to conventional mapping. And my #1 tip is, if you can't make a "good map" at least make a hard map.

[scifista42]

rileymartin said:

And my #1 tip is, if you can't make a "good map" at least make a hard map.

Haha, I agree. Just keep in mind that "hard" doesn't equal "just add more monsters" or even "throw monster hordes everywhere". Maps with scarce but clever monster placement can be both harder and more fun than maps with overblown but lazy monster placement.

[Phade102]

I'm still new to doom mapping, but i've learnt some things from building my maps.

1. Make sure the map you're building is finishable BY YOU. If you aren't able to complete the map on testing, theres a good chance other people will have a similar problem.
2. Make a map the way you want. Ultimately, you should be building for yourself.
3. Experiment with different textures together. Some textures clash horribly and just look ugly, but there are plenty of combinations that haven't been done yet that work quite well.
4. Id recommend starting with a simple shape for your rooms. Build a simple shape, then slowly add more onto it for detailing. Envision what you want the room to look like at the end, and go from there.

[Urthar]

In visual mode, in addition to those texture/flat copy-pasting functions already mentioned, I rely a lot on:

shift left-click (Selects all continuous walls/floor/ceilings that have the same texture/flat.)

shift c (Copies the texture offsets of a selected/highlighted wall.)
shift v (Pastes the texture offsets to a selected/highlighted wall.)

mouse-wheel on selected ceilings/floors (Move floor/ceiling up or down in increments of 8 units.)
shift mouse-wheel on selected ceilings/floors (Move floor/ceiling up or down in increments of 1 unit.)

In normal mode, the Stair Sector Builder tool is very useful for creating parallel and perpendicular lines to arbitary angles, though I almost never use it for creating actual stairs.

In general I tend to start placing monsters quite early on to get a feel for how they'll move around a space, and what pressure they exert, and see if I need to change anything to improve or limit their mobility or line of sight.

[Agentbromsnor]

The best tip I can give is to take a good look at the levels that inspire you the most, and see how you can take those ideas and make it into something unique to you. Even levels from other games.

Furthermore I stand by what bzzrak wrote: never make a slaughter-map. They are the most repetitive and boring kind of map, and while they do have their fans most of them are not worth anyone's time to complete.

[Phade102]

Agentbromsnor said:

The best tip I can give is to take a good look at the levels that inspire you the most, and see how you can take those ideas and make it into something unique to you. Even levels from other games.

Furthermore I stand by what bzzrak wrote: never make a slaughter-map. They are the most repetitive and boring kind of map, and while they do have their fans most of them are not worth anyone's time to complete.

Agreed, Slaughter maps are absolutely terrible. All slaughter maps prove is that the map creator, while capable of making good maps, has no real concept of monster placement and map flow. Admittedly, there are exceptions, such as Alien Vendetta and Scythe, but for the most case slaughter maps are just amazingly unbalanced and you have to literally be a god to play them.

[Fonze]

And queue the slaughtermap drama... Maybe it just shows your own lack of understanding of monster placement, but it's okay; just as when playing a map as when shopping for meat, everybody's an expert.

[Bad King John]

Vary the lighting between different rooms and even between areas in the same room. Gives a far more professional feel to the game. There are a lot of available variations but many level authors do not seem to make use of them. Passageways and door reveals should be darker then open rooms generally. However, avoid total blackness unless it's for a VERY good reason.

When I played Doom I for the very first time years ago I came to a room with a small maze of electronic cabinets (sorry, cannot remember the map number). No monsters were yet in sight, but the light level was going up and down or flickering in different parts of the room, all unsynchronised. It actually made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. If the light had been bright and steady the room would have looked quite mundane and would have had nowhere near that effect.