What do you hate the most about mapping?

[Roofi]

Starting a new map with no clear idea of how to start it.

 

 

[yakfak]

i always start with a small idea and then start retroactively piling on epic conceits and side areas until I abandon the map and start another

i could put out a megawad of giant levels with no exits tbh

[Albertoni]

17 minutes ago, Bauul said:

I really struggle with secrets.

 

They're basically cupboards whose only purpose is to unbalance the map. Map balance is hard enough without having to worry about whether a player does or doesn't find a secret.

Exactly. I make my secrets HARD. The map is meant to be played without them. If you find one, good, enjoy that soulcharge / blue armor. Balanced without secrets, easy if you're willing to figure out the secrets.

[LordShadowZ]

• Letting my inspiration and ambition get ahead of my restraint and the map just gets out of hand and massive, and it takes me 2 months to finish it
• Not having enough inspiration and taking weeks just to get the generic layout of a map down
• When I can't decide what textures I want to use in a room
• Thing placement. More specifically constantly tweaking enemy placements until the encounters feel good enough to me
• Trying to tone down monster counts on difficulties below UV
• When I decide my maps should have thorough ammo and health balancing on all difficulties. I must hate myself a little bit

[Memfis]

The fact that you can't experience your map properly as a player who doesn't know what's coming. You're already familiar with everything in the level so it's hard to get excited about anything in it. By making the map you're basically depriving yourself of most of the fun that can be had with it.

[Deadwing]

Playtesting, definetly. Placing things and balancing the map is pretty cool, but then you start playtesting and nothing works like you wanted it too lol The worst is when you have 99% of the level working well but that little fucker in an ambush is not teleporting in or waking up.

[ShoDemo]

While mapping, I sometimes hate my decision making on texture placement. I always come up with a general idea and then I struggle for half an hour and more to get the room looking good by my standards (texture-wise). For an example, say I want to make a hellish looking room. After, I get the shape of the room right, I am like: <<Great, now which Hellish texture shall I use?>>

But I find the perfect texture in the end (for me), so it doesn't matter that much. Also aligning can be a pain sometimes, but it is satisfying getting it right.

[Misty]

The most annoying thing for me is loosing progress after gzdoom builder crash. After that I have mental breakdown and blame myself for forgetting save map progress and I start draw everything again. zdoom/gzdoom in udmf is way to unstable and sensitive when I do weird line shapes. 

[Da Werecat]

Envisioning artsy shapes and spaces, making a quick draft in the editor, gazing at how unappealing it looks, and spiraling into the "THIS IS SHIT; I AM SHIT" recursive loop.

 

Also everything else.

[Crunchynut44]

I always avoid fine detailing such as borders and trims because I just get so bored and impatient, and I tend to lose focus. Most of all I hate thing placement, im not even sure why, a lot of the time my maps go weeks without any enemies because I put it off for so long.

[KVELLER]

If there is one thing I truly hate, is noy being able to move textures in ceilings/floors. That thing of moving whole fucking sectors to make a damn ceiling light look good gets really annoying.

[42PercentHealth]

Mapping on Linux, where the most advanced editor is Eureka. Has anyone gotten DB or anything with automatic texture alignment, a "create door" function, and a "create curved wall" function to run on Linux? It would be greatly appreciated!

[NuMetalManiak]

Making something that can appeal to other people aside from myself is the major one. Sometimes, I just say forget it and make something only I like.

[Urthar]

Inital layout and finishing the map tend to be the toughest for me, but it depends on the map. Some maps more or less build themselves and are a joy to work on, but you also get ones that don't come together until they're 90% complete, and you're just glad to get them working and finished.

[error313]

Knowing the whole route annoys me a little, is the reason I add many monsters, and to interconnect all the ways to make it replayable for me. That's why I think I do maps for deathmatch

 

[DMPhobos]

12 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I enjoy pretty much all of the process, I just hate how long it takes to get anything done!

Pretty much this, wish i could just be done with a map in weeks, but most of the time it ends up taking months!

 

Also i hate to make a really developed area, just to realize that it isn't working and you have to delete it and redo it again, and another minor one, but it annoys the crap out of me to have to replace the default textures 

[Zulk RS]

The fact I haven't made too many maps probably has something to do with is but...

For me, it seems that what I hate most about mapping varies from map to map. On one map, I had a blast with everything until getting minute features to work ruined it.
At other times it's the detailing and architecture that's the problem.
On another map, I'm having trouble with the layout of the map. Then testing another map is horrible. Then there are maps where everything but thing placement is fine.
Lastly, there are those maps where nothing is going well and I'm hating everything about mapping.

[Ichor]

Making new rooms, especially in the beginning. It might not be so bad if it's a cave type map and you have a lot more freedom as to how to make the areas, but those castle or other structured maps can be a chore. I'd rather not make any more maps with a bunch of squarish "open door, shoot monsters, pick up stuff, leave" type of rooms.

 

Once a decent portion of the map is done along with the general theme, it gets easier to come up with ideas, but it's always the beginning that seems to take forever to figure out. You really can't do anything once the first areas are done, so the whle map progress suffers.

[DAZZER]

Making really good progress in a Map but then suddenly gzdoombuilder.exe stopped working -_-

[Battle_Korbi]

Having to place textures.

 

If I made simple maps okay. BUT NOO. Every single 1x1 sector HAS to be textured properly, and God forbid you want those things RAISED for a 1.

 

Which stems from another problem:

 

Me: Okay, this shall be a easy 5 room map with little to no detail. Let's do it!

Also me: *makes a brief layout and starts imagining the backstory of the map*

Me: Well yeah, small details are important! It is for the setting and atmosphere! How can I make the player believe they are walking in shoes of a Slider if there aren't dimensional traveling machines and computers all over the place.

Also me: *starts making "computer" sectors where computers would be*

Me: But something went wrong when our hero travelled into the future of his own dimension to deliver the payload! There was BLOOD EVERYWHERE! THE PLACE WAS UNDER ATTACK!

Also me: *starts making closets and office desks and you guessed it, more computers*

Me: Now our hero must find a way to return to his time and possibly escape back to the prime dimension! For that... he has to... START UP THE ENGINES! SET THE DATE! AND DEFEAT THE CYBERDEMON WHICH NOW HOLDS THE DEVICE CAPTIVE, until the DEMONS can arrive and USE it, to INVADE THE PAST!

Also me: *places a single Cyberdemon guarding... the primary machine room with a blue skullkey needed to turn on the dimensional traveling machine (kinda like a car)*

Me: DRAMA! ROMANCE! BLOODSHED!

Also me: *starts hyper-detailising the entire map, replacing textures, setting up doors, making sure the computer tower number 9 is a bit higher than number 8 because originality, keycards, barrels, "trap room" (instakills the player should he try and enter it), making every lightning diffrent, aligning the textures because I missed some, looking up the internet, changes the music, and decides to leave items and monsters after playtesting*

Me: See what awaits our hero in the... Initial D(imension): The Electric Driftaloo Stage!

ME: *playtests the map, tries out every trigger, finishes it in 2 minutes tops*

ME! ME! ME! ME! MEEEE!: *figures out he spent five hours on a single fucking map and realises he has more than half of the textures to replace and to add more monsters and items*

Guess who motherfucker: Fuck it. Next time I'll finish it I guess.

 

That is the story of Waddie, the unfinished wad, who was just about to embark on his adventure across the internet, until he became unfinished enough.

[Job]

It might sound like a pity party to say this, but my main deterrent from mapping is the community. We have such a broad audience of skilled mappers and players that making something that stands out has become increasingly difficult. To get any accolades (c'mon why else do we map?) you need to come up with a unique approach or be a one-man top-quality megawad mapping machine. So many others have already "built the better mousetrap" and made their way into the Doom canon. If you're not able to achieve that, yours will be one of many maps whose thread eventually tumbles into the deepest recesses of the forum pages.

 

For all the reasons the rest of you mentioned, and more, the time and energy required to make a solid map rarely pays off for the author.

[ReX]

5 hours ago, Deadwing said:

Playtesting, definetly.

+1

I find play-testing to often get tedious, especially after repeated testing of a map. Seeing the same geometry and textures and enemies over and over again, discovering new things that need to be tweaked, hitting my head on the desk because some thing is not working - all of these make the play-testing process, for me, the least interesting part of making mods.

[Xaser]

I have over ten maps (not even exaggerating) that are stuck in the "done except thing placement" stage. My Achilles heel is starting to fester.

[Deadwing]

28 minutes ago, Job said:

It might sound like a pity party to say this, but my main deterrent from mapping is the community. We have such a broad audience of skilled mappers and players that making something that stands out has become increasingly difficult. To get any accolades (c'mon why else do we map?) you need to come up with a unique approach or be a one-man top-quality megawad mapping machine. So many others have already "built the better mousetrap" and made their way into the Doom canon. If you're not able to achieve that, yours will be one of many maps whose thread eventually tumbles into the deepest recesses of the forum pages.

 

For all the reasons the rest of you mentioned, and more, the time and energy required to make a solid map rarely pays off for the author.

 

There are so many possibilities from mapping that even if your work is "lower quality" than highly praised mapsets, you can get yout space in the community. Even still, in my case, I do mapping mostly because I like to do it. If I would look for accolades I would've given up years ago, but the ideas just keep coming lol

 

16 minutes ago, Xaser said:

I have over ten maps (not even exaggerating) that are stuck in the "done except thing placement" stage. My Achilles heel is starting to fester.

 

If you abandoned these levels, maybe I can do the thing placement of some of them lol

[40oz]

let me start by saying that mapping is great and I enjoy the process of creating new content very much.

 

That said, that final error testing stage where I gotta figure out every little possible place the player can get stuck or break the map is by far the most uninteresting and unrewarding part of the process.

[Rosh Fragger]

Not being able to make WADs as remarkable as other great mappers, but still trying and failing. This frustration can be quite harsh! And running out of ideas is also a thing...

 

Making good maps require a lot of time, and patience for some.

[schwerpunk]

3 hours ago, 42PercentHealth said:

Mapping on Linux, where the most advanced editor is Eureka. Has anyone gotten DB or anything with automatic texture alignment, a "create door" function, and a "create curved wall" function to run on Linux? It would be greatly appreciated!

Definitely this. Since I haven't owned a Windows PC for at least a year, my attempts at mapping haven't even been worth sharing. I had such a good workflow going with GZDB. Maybe I should just buy a Windows key and run it in a virtual machine.

[Phobus]

Well...

 

1) Setting difficulty modes. I'm not sure if that's worse on maps like the Escalation series where I'm trying to be clever with them in order to maintain a number of enemies, or when I'm just half-arsing them in a normal map by reducing enemy numbers. I mean, who else is playing my maps anyway?

 

2) Playtesting and bug checking my larger efforts. Particularly when I've left thing placement until the end of the creative process and have some hours of work on my hands.

 

3) Being done with an idea before I'm done with the map. Most of the maps I've ever abandoned were down to that.

 

4) When it becomes totally routine and mundane. Making my 60th (or more) limit-removing map with vanilla line actions it'll take a really special idea to even get me started. Especially when I start to think about all the tweaking and the like that comes with meeting any sort of standard.

 

5) My own standards. I expect myself to produce maps that have some basic artistic capability and technical accomplishment. This gets much worse with ZDoom mapping where there's so much more fidelity.

 

6) That 3D floors and MAPINFO aren't in some sort of basic standard of mapping. They're so enabling, but going into ZDoom mapping always encourages me to play around with advanced features and other fun stuff.

 

7) Getting distracted by resource creation and manipulation. In making a 8-hour map I ended up spending 3 hours messing about with textures, ZMAPINFO and other stuff. The novelty definitely excites me more.

 

And let's not forget... When the fucking editor crashes on you. Some of my earliest editing memories are of the "Nodebuilding" and "Saving" progress bars in DEU creeping up to a certain point and then freezing before bombing out due to a lack of RAM or whatever. That majorly let me down... These days at least GZDoomBuilder just crashes near enough incidentally, wiping out potentially much more work :p

Edited May 22, 2017 by Phobus

[snapshot]

I enjoy the whole process, I just can't wait to get it finished, It takes me long to get rooms detailed.

[DoctorGenesis]

3 hours ago, 42PercentHealth said:

Mapping on Linux, where the most advanced editor is Eureka. Has anyone gotten DB or anything with automatic texture alignment, a "create door" function, and a "create curved wall" function to run on Linux? It would be greatly appreciated!

I have Slade on Ubuntu, but I haven't tooled around with its map editor much... GZDoom Builder is part of the reason I keep a Windows 10 PC around in case.