Do you remember your first mapping attempt for for Doom2/Doom1 ?

[riderr3]

In old times. It's map was for Doom 2, and created with Yadex map editor (predecessor of Eureka).

There is one big and dark starting room with acid pit. Also there an a door leading to small room with one Commander Keen. On another side of starting room a lift which leaded to outside area with grass, trees and zombiemen. And there even is no exit. So I deleted this from my HDD, but I remember my first map.

[Memfis]

My first was in Yadex too, in 2007. In 2012 I made a quite faithful recreation of it, it's called mem_firstmap_frommemory. Maybe someone still has it and can share.

[BigDickBzzrak]

Check out Aquarius199's Crappy Doom WAD Double Feature #4. It's there... and the dude played that crap for 20 minutes and even bothered to open it up in SLADE.

It was also reviewed on Doom WAD Station... once in This Week In Doom and once separately.
Not to mention the Newstuff Chronicles #502, where poor gaspe subjected himself to that mental torture.

My most and least succestful WAD. What a paradox.

[joe-ilya]

Just a non-shape room, with nazis, an imp in a cage, a lift that leads to a second room where you have to open a door while being surrounded by two mancs behind bars and push the exit.
Not to mention; every FUCKING sidedef had a different texture, not sure where was I going with that one, but I later replaced it with something accordingly better and never bothered with it ever again.

[snapshot]

I still have it.

[Voros]

1-2 years ago.
A small 64ish-64ish sector, with player start there. Big empty room in front if the player. A "server" on the east of this room, behind it some guns. North of this room, an opening labelled exit. Walking through it, a long tunnel is shown, with Barons with their backs turned. Said tunnel has some monsters (Mancubi, zombies, PE, etc) hiding on the sides, for at least 3 intervals. This whole tunnel has non-damaging lava floor BTW. Near the end of this tunnel, lies an Arachnotron, which shoots at you while you're in the tunnel, and this tunnel is narrow too. At the end, is a big ledge. Ledge guarded by another Arachnotron. Jumping down from there, you encounter Revenants. A corner lies up ahead, with it a room of Cyberdemon (or was it SM?), Archvile and some other monsters. One more hallway upahead. Weapons littered here. Opening up ahead. Opening leads to a gigantic room filled with slaughterfest-like army. Two pilars at the other side have a Cyberdemon on top on each of them. On the right side of this room, is a teleporter pad, distinguished by its diminishing light. This teleporter leads to a small Wolf3D style, with nazis, room, serving as a secret. Teleporting back, there was also an opening between the two pillars mentioned before. In it, a small flesh tunnel, guared by two(?) Mancubi. Behind them, a corner. Walking through the corner, the John Romero head on stick is here. Kill it to finish the map.

I couldn't get doors to work properly, so I ditched them. I remember wanting to call this "Devil's Run". What utter crap this map was.
The next attempt was more serious, but I didn't get to finish it because my laptop died. Hopefully I'll get a new one in a few months!

[esselfortium]

Sometime around 1999 or 2000, 10-year-old me made some bad maps using Hellmaker.

The earliest map I can remember making was a big tall FIREWAL blob room stuffed with monsters. I think I had a friend over and we were just amazed at how cool it was that we could do that.

The next one I remember working on after that was a silly idea a friend of mine had come up with called Mischief Night 2000, where you played as a kid running around town throwing things at houses and avoiding getting caught by cops. (i.e. GTA as poorly reimagined by middle schoolers.) In retrospect, there was clearly no chance it would have ever worked in Doom, even if I wasn't a kid with no idea how to map or draw, but little things like "is this actually even possible to do" didn't matter much when I was 10. I remember starting to build a convenience store, making a simple counter with health bonuses on it, and then running out of ideas, and so down the hall it randomly turned into a redrock room with impaled dudes because I didn't have much of an attention span when making Doom levels as a kid.

Most of my old creations from when I was a kid are long gone now, but a couple years ago I found an artifact from Mischief Night 2000, a badly-drawn sprite set for a straitjacket-wearing crazy guy named Skip Goat who threw boogers at you. I'll have to see if I can find it again.

edit: I found Skip Goat. Go hog wild. http://esselfortium.net/wasd/SKIPGOAT.WAD

[HavoX]

Several months ago, I did make a square-sized map... it's not much, however, for it was for testing purposes.

[Chezza]

My first mapping attempt was early last year, I think.
My very very first attempt didn't last long as it was a mess while I attempted to make a computer terminal and control panel - then my mates visited my house and I stopped.

Then the next proper go I created a medium sized room and experimented all sort of ideas I thought think of. Actually the room is really good looking considering it was my first. Operation_UAC map 01, you will see the work an ambitious noobie.

[Combinebobnt]

I thought linedefs were walls so my first map wouldn't load

My first playable map was a brown box

[roadworx]

ye, it's called atrocous.wad and it's terrible

it's also my only map i've completed, because whenever i start one i decide that it looks absolutely awful and i trash it.

[Agentbromsnor]

I made my first "real" attempt in Doom Builder 1. Doom format, nothing fancy.

[Tracer]

It was in Doombuilder 2. It was called "Welcome To Hell". It was designed for Brutal Doom (you meeded to be able to jump, and it relied on the glowing eyes of spectres to add a creepy element to it). I still have it. You can tell it was a beginner map, but I was told it was decent.

I'm glad I don't map for Brutal anymore. Horrible idea.

[Spectre01]

Yeah, apparently about half a year ago I made this thing after opening GZDB. Spam the BFG and either die in 10 seconds or finish in 30. You know, if you can't make a good map at least make it hard. ;)

[Empyre]

My first map was made using Doom Cad in Windows 3.1, which was sitting on top of DOS 6 (6.2? the last DOS, anyway). I started it in '96, but then my computer crashed. Then I used a friend's computer to make my second map, and when I got my computer running again in '97, I used what I learned making the second map to fix up and finish the first map. Both maps, and my third map, too, are in Empyrion as OLD01 - OLD03 so you can compare and contrast them to what they look like now. Another friend, the who gave me the name Empyre, complained that my first map was too big, so I split it into 4 maps, so the modern versions of OLD01 - OLD03 are now Map02 - MAP07.

[ukiro]

I started mapping in late winter 1994, so March-ish. I made about 8 maps that spring and summer, all lost now I think. Not sure what I started out with but for a while I was using DoomEd for windows 3.11 (not to be confused with id's own editor by the same name which was not available at the time). Eventually I switched to EdMap in the fall of that year which had a far lower propensity for weird errors, letting me build more freely at long last.

To quote my old Tantrum .txt file:

In the beginning I used DoomEd v2.60 beta 4 but as soon as I got EdMap 1.20 I used that one.

Tantrum was completed in the fall of 1995 after the first batch of Quake screenshots were released in august, but not uploaded to cdrom.com until 1996.

[kristus]

13-14 year old me made a few haphazardly textured sectors and connected them back in 1994.

Was using DoomEd 2.6

A few of the things I tried was what would happen if I put a Spider mastermind in a narrow staircase, if I tried overlaying sectors on top of each other, would I get 3d floors? I didn't.

[Doomkid]

My first attempt at making a map from scratch was in 2001 with WadAuthor. Prior I'd kinda-sorta modified a few maps in DoomCAD and even found a tool that allowed savegame modification, but I didn't really understand how to use either of them.

My first 2 maps were a campsite and a pre-911 New York even though I'd never visited (I was making these as a kid in October 2001, to give a little context). Both were filled with 1994-esque shit but they were huge and really fun for a kid at the time. I learned how doors and tags and such worked and basically fell in love with Doom mapping. I really wish I still had them despite their suckyness!

[Phml]

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/a-c/chaosord

Tried Doom Builder 1 before, but I was too confused to even make a complete sector. DB2 was a godsend.

I built this map room by room as I learned things, and didn't ask for feedback before posting the finished thing on Doomworld. Ideas making perfect sense in my mind, no self-awareness nor experience to filter this into something playable for everyone else.

[LexiMax]

I actually learned editing out of the back of this book sometime in the mid-90's:



This book had a tutorial in it that taught you how to use an editor called WADED:



It was by far the most free-form editor I have ever used, and there are still things I love about this editor even today.

To draw a sector, you could draw contiguous lines like in Doom Builder. Unlike Doom Builder, when you were done, WADED did not attempt to actually create a valid sector from your result - the lines were colored purple to designate that they didn't actually exist yet...or at the very least they were linedefs with no associated sidedefs, I didn't know which exactly.

So essentially, you could draw half of a sector, and come back later and draw the other half later. Or maybe you would start with a corner, but then draw lots of lines criss-crossing the corner to add detail and texture, like sticking pins through a pincushion, and then simply delete the ends of the lines that weren't needed, which would leave you with an oddly shaped organic corner. Or maybe you would just draw patterns and polygons overlapping each other, and then delete the unneeded odds and ends.

Once you were done placing lines and you had at least one enclosed polygon, you would then click on "Make Sector", then click on the inside of that polygon, and the sector would be created, along with all of the touching linedefs and sidedefs. The "Make Sector" feature of Doom Builder 2 was my feature request from this editor.

The editor wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. The whole thing was coded in QuickBASIC, for one. To my knowledge, there was no way to align THINGS to a grid. Make Sector didn't always figure out the proper front and back sidedefs. It had a built-in nodebuilder (presumably also written in QuickBASIC) which was slow and incredibly buggy. There wasn't even a copy and paste feature. And of course it was prone to horrific crashes.

I still loved the thing though, and when I came back to mapping in the early '00's my first two released maps were made 100% with WADED. My third completed map ever was ZDCTF MAP02, which I actually also started in WADED, but the lack of copy-and-paste makes CTF mapping rather difficult, so at that point I finally downloaded Doom Builder.

But dang I still wish Doom Builder had a way to draw linedefs with no sidedefs and that I could draw lines without automatically trying to create a sector.

[VGamingJunkie]

I know it wasn't my first by a long shot but I, at one point, attempted to make a sort of pseudo stealth level (for the first half of it) by having a demon activate and cause your death in another room if you made any noise.

[Job]

Yes, it was terrible. I think it was around when I was 12 or 14. I was using EdMap (good for its time but an absolute turd now), which was fairly unstable and munched a few of my maps. The first one, though, was a fair-sized labyrinth composed of sector after sector being a test for a different attribute. The textures were barely thematically correct and the lighting was all over the place, mostly on the dark side. As I recall, there was an archvile and a hell knight not far from the pistol start, so it wasn't even terribly fun to play.

[Gamer With Dignity]

I made a wad called Goom II: Hall of Ears using XWE when I was in middle school. It sucked real bad and the first level was impossible to beat because you would fall into a pit of untextured linedefs and overlapping geometry. This was the "illusio-pit". The chaingun sprites disappeared (it became the "stealth chaingun") and the rocket launcher would cause the extreme death animation to play in reverse (the rocket launcher then became the "prototype unmaker"). If you made it to the end of the level you would be rewarded with a hallway lined with textures of Hitler's ear.

[MFG38]

Very vaguely. And even then, it's too much.

[SFoZ911]

I do. I learned how to use DB1 using Dr.Sleep's tutorial and after finishing it I started adding more rooms and more enemies to the map. I got rid of it pretty fast though and moved on to entirely original maps later.

I think it was around 2007-2008

[CapnClever]

What I mostly remember was using Doom Construction Kit and Heretic deathmatch levels. Also, that it was about drawing boxes and then deciding on the wallpaper and then putting stuff in those boxes. That was close to 20 years, a good three quarters of my life, ago.

[Bauul]

CapnClever said:

What I mostly remember was using Doom Construction Kit and Heretic deathmatch levels. Also, that it was about drawing boxes and then deciding on the wallpaper and then putting stuff in those boxes. That was close to 20 years, a good three quarters of my life, ago.

I too learned using the Doom Construction Kit!

It was great: the CD contained DEU for mapping, DeHacked, and a few other editors like DMUS (if I'm remembering that right) for the music.

My first map that you could actually finish would have been about 20 years ago when I was about 10, and was a small angular room full of animated textures. No enemies, but a load of body Things and a Romero head. I was just amazed I could actually create all that. Well, when DEU wasn't crashing on me.

My first real map, Foursite, I made just in the last year and released the other month.

[Koko Ricky]

I made several very ambitious and naive attempts in the late 90s, via DEEP. I had no understanding of linedefs, sector tags, specials, etc. I didn't really even understand that Doom is a fundamentally two dimensional game that has very idiosyncratic architectural limitations. So in other words, my wholly incomplete early tests were disastrous. Nowadays I can make great maps, but still struggle with adding new graphics. Hopefully I'll release a damn map next year!

[Misty]

I remember my first attempts to create something playable in 2013. But I felt annoyed by difficult doom builder control,so I dropped it. And this year tried again and showed my first map. It wasn`t that good,but I hope with more practise I`ll get more better than I was two,three years ago.

[Havoc Crow]

Gather round, everyone, and let me tell you the story of Supermarket.

* * *

Aye, I was a whippersnapper back then. Don't remember how old, exactly, but definitely was still in elementary school. And one day -- probably influenced by recently playing Zombies TC -- I had this great idea for a map that would be named "Supermarket".

My concept was thus: the map would be a "realistic representation" of a supermarket. (By which I mean it'd be a series of small, flat rectangular rooms connected with stairwells, each being a different floor of the store.) The map would actually have an storyline: you're a small-time thief, out to rob the local supermarket. Which you do, by entering the store with a pistol and 50 bullets, and gradually shooting your way through the crowds of customers and staff -- beginning from floor 1, up to the roof, at which point MAP01 ends as our thief falls asleep at the top (?!)

MAP02 -- as the textfile would explain, once I'd actually get around to writing it -- would involve the thief trying to make it back to the ground floor to escape with his life, which wouldn't be easy because of all the police that's arrived in the meantime...

I had a lot of ideas for how to "realistically" reproduce a typical real-life mall. Floor 1 would be the checkout floor, with a bunch of zombies standing around, representing customers and shop assistants. Other floors would include: the pharmacy, where you'd meet drug-addled junkies, but also health items; and the bookstore, which would contain the chainsaw replacement: a kung-fu self-learning book, which would give you the ability to punch people at an extremely high speed.

The map was supposed to be about you killing regular humans, but I didn't really want to replace the enemy sprites; I planned to simply explain in the textfile what each monster stood for. The cast list would include:

• Zombieman: Regular civilian. The text file would explain that "everyone in this city is armed", which I assumed was a necessary element of a crime-ridden hellhole.
  
• Shotgun guy: Possibly I meant to use them as store security? Can't remember now.
  
• Heavy weapon dude: The shop assistants.
  
• Imp: Junkies. You'd meet them only on the pharmacy floor. Presumably, they came there to get high on all the colorful pills. I mean, it's only logical: "drugs" means both narcotics and medicine, therefore you can get high on medicines! I was such a smart kid.
  (Why'd they look like imps, though? Well, because my main idea of "what drugs did to a person" came from a dark-age Batman comic where a bunch of kids got high on some generic pills, then proceeded to sweat profusely, grin like madmen, and set a guy on fire. Also that infamous "Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue" TV special where it was revealed that drugs turned you into a zombie. So, it makes perfect sense that taking drugs turns one into a humanoid monster. The fireballs? Uh, drugs give you really, really bad breath, too.)
  
• Demon: Police dogs.
  
• SS Nazi: Policemen, duh.
  
• Hell Knight: Ice cream deliverymen. No, really. They'd appear on MAP02; the idea is that they've delivered their sweet cargo to the store, only to find out that everyone inside are dead and so nobody's gonna pay them! So, they take revenge by tossing gobs of mint-flavored ice cream at you.
  

(The gameplay would likely suck, of course, but back then I didn't give a damn about gameplay... most of the time I played with cheats on, anyway. No, my idea of an awesome Doom WAD was one with cool sprite and texture replacements, and/or realistic locations... and who cared how it played!)

I was getting increasingly excited. My ambition was unstoppable. Why limit myself to two maps? I'd make a third map as well, an epic recreation of the Grand Theft Auto experience in Doom form!

The idea of MAP03 was that you've succesfully left the shop, then randomly decided to take over the city's entire criminal underworld, because why the hell not.

So, you'd find yourself running around a big city map, collecting keys until you can enter the heavily guarded mansion of the biggest, meanest crime boss in town, possibly represented by a Cyberdemon. On the way, you'd have to contend with regular civilian Zombiemen, Shotgun Guys who now represent rival gangsters, and policemen -- in particular, at one point you'd have to infiltrate a police depot.

The map would include realistically represented shops, bars, shady strip clubs... and of course, it wouldn't be a proper GTA rip-off if it didn't have cars! Cars you can steal and drive! The idea was that to access several areas of the city, you had to find a specific parked car that would teleport you there, the idea being that you hijacked the car and drove there. I had vague plans of replacing the teleporter fog sprite with some kind of a first-person view of you turning a steering wheel around.

* * *

So, with my youthful mind fixated on this glorious idea, I downloaded a map editor -- I think it was DEU -- and set off to bring my ideas to life. I didn't have the first idea how to map for Doom, actually, and didn't feel like reading any instructions, but I figured out it should all be intuitive. I started with the checkout floor of MAP01.

I made a rectangular room;

I put a bunch of zombies in it;

I made a rectangle which would be the checkout counter;

I had no idea how to make it protrude out of the floor, so I made some arbitrary, haphazard changes to its sector and linedef settings;

and then I ran the map.

The counter was one giant HOM.

Disappointed, I gave up.

And so "Supermarket" never saw the light of day, and Cyb and Linguica had to find something else to complete the "Top 100 WADS of All Time" list.