How did you guys learn how to map?

[Empyre]

In the 90s when I had no Internet, not even dial-up, I got a book called the Doom Hacker's Guide that had a CD with several editing programs, and the one I liked was Doom Cad. Over the years, I upgraded from Doom format to Boom, then Doom in Hexen, and just now, UDMF and loving it. I also have gone through each generation of Doom Builder.

[Dgemie]

Well, I kinda couldn't resist. I guess that, having released 5 proper maps, of which one I'm somewhat pleased with [in a "something good" and not "something playable" way, at least], I can have a point.
I too belong into the category of designers who come up with areas already containing details and only then implement them into a map. I used to really like drawing isometric stuff in classes and I think that mapping is like that - I imagine an area in my head and see it come to life as I draw it in an editor, and that feeling is probably the thing that I enjoy the most about mapping. And some of my favorite maps stuck with me for having a proper mood, and I think that it's not really possible to follow that if you return to areas that you have already done. I have done a "gameplay-oriented" map once, and it ended up being covered at more than a half in STARTAN and lacked height variation almost completely, yet I never felt like fully overhauling it as I was afraid that the balance that was essentially a happy accident for me would be ruined.

Edited June 6, 2017 by Dgemie

[skillsaw]

I didn't have the internet back then, so to learn the basics...

 

 

To develop my own style, it took 20 (on and off) years of repetition and well-disguised plagiarism, accompanied by lots of criticism from myself and from others.

[UglyStru]

34 minutes ago, skillsaw said:

I didn't have the internet back then, so to learn the basics...

 

 

To develop my own style, it took 20 (on and off) years of repetition and well-disguised plagiarism, accompanied by lots of criticism from myself and from others.

Wew lad. What were some of your first early projects? 

[skillsaw]

Here is the oldest that still exists:

 

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/0-9/666

 

my pre 2011 work is pretty bad IMO, here's a list:

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Paul_DeBruyne_(skillsaw)

 

unfortunately, my other 90's wads never made it to the archives - I only uploaded them to AOL. They're lost forever as far as I know.

[Memfis]

Do you remember the file names? It is quite possible that someone like Grazza still has some of them.

[skillsaw]

8levels.wad

hellarea.wad

 

If @Grazza (or anyone else) happened to have an archive I'd be thrilled... 

[scifista42]

I downloaded Doom Builder 2 and messed around with it until I learned. No tutorials, aside from reading a series of articles about Doom mapping in WadAuthor on a Czech website, which inspired me to try out Doom mapping in the first place.

[Ribbiks]

On 6/1/2017 at 9:38 AM, stru said:

Did you just jump into Doom Builder...

 

I wish :p. All fear Hellmaker, of which my fondest memory is the "save" button that had a 50% chance of doing what you asked, and a 50% chance of irreparably corrupting your wad for some malevolent reason. Made a whole lotta shitty vanilla maps with that as a kid that have since been lost, except a few scraps. In general anything I learned about doom maps has been through raw dissection of existing content, just poking around in editors piece by piece until I understood the mechanics. Some amusing mistakes along the way: When I first learned about boom's generalized actions I didn't know db2 had some nice menus built in for them, so for my first maps that used them I was literally sitting there in the editor with boomref.txt open in another window, manually adding hex values together to get the ids for specific actions I wanted, shit was brutal :p.

 

And yeah, idk. I guess I learned how to map by dragging a few megawads through an editor and smacking my head into a monitor for years at a stretch until it sank in -.-. There's a whole map "design" can of worms that I tend to think about more in artsy/philosophical ways these days, but that's a whole separate thing. I'd echo skillsaw's comment about shamelessly plagiarizing things you enjoy, with an emphasis on eventually learning your own "voice": That is, separating out and amplifying the aspects of existing work that you like, and taking them in new directions that feel your own.

[BadLuckBurt]

Hi, new here :) I used to mess around with WadEd back in the days but nothing good ever came out of that. I'm currently working on my first real map in GZDoombuilder. I did read a lot of tutorials and decided to leave the advanced port features alone for now, current map is in vanilla Doom format (I never knew you had to align the ceiling / floor to the grid o.O). I'm trying to avoid looking at other maps for now but I did download some floor plans off Google in case I get stuck with layouts / interesting shapes.

[Psyrus]

I actually started off drawing conceptual maps on paper actually.  Most were of a simplistic design and date back to 1998.  I didn't have a computer until around a year later, but by then I had nearly 30+ maps in a binder.  A friend near the tail end of my junior year of high school introduced me to DCK 3.62 in the computer lab during lunch, and I started to recreate the first map of my drawings after installing it at home.  I think only three or four drawings made it as actual maps I would later include in my first project.

 

Continued here for TL;DR:

Spoiler

Later I would learn by example after playing some of the classics (e.g. Memento Mori series, Alien Vendetta, etc.), eventually make the move over to WadAuthor, and starting getting comfortable with some tricks and building styles of that time.  I would start building with more complexly designed areas and borrowed map gimmicks/concepts in mind with maps like The Grand Arising (Hexed Helix) featuring a personal take on the TNT Wormhole concept.  I actually forgot that I uploaded that too.

 

Then the rise of ZDoom and the "NMD" (Needs More Detail) era happened.  I did finally start using Doom Builder around this time, and the influence of this period led me to produce this just before I left for pursue my Bachelor's degree.  That map pretty much burned me out afterwards.

 

When I came back here four years later and found out maps have been toned down since then with more emphasis on gameplay, I started showing more interest in mapping again.  I'm in the process of relearning some map concepts generally accepted today.

 

Learn, build, learn more, repeat.  That pretty much sums it up.

Edited June 5, 2017 by Psyrus : URL error

[joepallai]

Tricks of the Doom Gurus and 3d Game Alchemy, plus a couple of other books.  

[Jayextee]

Having no Internet access of my own, something around late 1999-ish, I got hold of WadEd 1.71 on a floppy disk from a friend and fucked around with it; first starting with the typical "Cyberdemon in the outside area of E1M1" shit to building my first rooms and things (wondering why WadEd kept crashing along the way; nasty piece of work -- but the drawing method was the closest thing to Doom Builder's standard out of all the early DOS editors, so...) until; maybe after a week of headbutting my keyboard; I cranked out a super-linear 'epic' (about six minutes long, but not very detailed -- a good job because WadEd would vomit after a a couple thousand sidedefs) where I didn't know how to tag linedefs/sectors. It had just doors really (untagged lifts and crushers? Crashville!) and one working teleporter for a secret.

 

Then a small handful of maps before cocky little me decided "I AM GOOD ENOUGH TO MAKE A WHOLE MEGAWAD NOW". Nope. I made a three-map episode called "Innocent Evil" (it was a joke, but hey -- you were the demons all along, right?) which I cannibalised to become the (awful) 7-map Murderous Intent. Note how I stuck little computer panels into EACH AND EVERY FUCKING WALL EVER but somehow couldn't get my head around texture aligning; with WadEd it was awful though, and could only manually-offset in increments of 4. Ew.

 

How did I learn to map? Awkwardly. ;)

[pcorf]

It was 1996, I used a 486-66 with 8mb ram, 2mb video card, and Windows 95 and no internet. I learned the basics through the Doomcad Tutorial (Doomcad 5.1) which I got from a shareware CD and then not long after that I discovered the grid feature and that is when I really started to figure out stuff which would eventually start making twzone.wad and other experimental maps. Also used BSP 1.2X to build the bsp. Oh yes the good old days of DOS.

[Uncle 80]

I used altavista or yahoo and downloaded the first map editor I found, and "luckily" that turned out to be DoomE2 (Doom Easy Edit). It had a lot of prefabs like doors, lifts etc, except they didn't work as intended when you placed them in your maps. It did however have a drawing function not found in Deu and the likes, so I stuck with DoomE2 for drawing layouts, and then I would open the map and tweak it in Deu (later WinDeu) until i finally discovered WadAuthor several years later and ditched my "dual shitty editor" setup.

 

My biggest problem was figuring out how sidedefs worked, so after making a bunch of "pillar stairs" in DoomE2 i took a long, hard look at MAP02 in the editor and figured it out. After that, it was all about inspecting MM2 and later Requiem to try and figure out how they made all those cool visual effects and line specials happen. 1996 yeah

Edited June 6, 2017 by Uncle 80

[UglyStru]

Well shit, no idea how I could compete with people who have been mapping since I was 2 years old. 

[Dragonfly]

17 minutes ago, stru said:

compete

That's just the thing - you're competing with nobody! It's not a competition, it's a hobby designed to primarily allow you to entertain yourself with the added perk of being able to share your works. :)

[UglyStru]

Yeah but I get discouraged when I see something so vast and detailed and here I am with a small ugly brown room consisting of nothing but a broken teleporter and a cyberdemon with his head caught in the ceiling. 

[Not Jabba]

17 minutes ago, stru said:

Yeah but I get discouraged when I see something so vast and detailed and here I am with a small ugly brown room consisting of nothing but a broken teleporter and a cyberdemon with his head caught in the ceiling. 

Just take one thing at a time. Fix the stuck Cyber, then fix the teleporter, then make the room more interesting, then make a door, then make another room, and then keep going, one foot in front of the other. To paraphrase 40oz, the reason it looks bad is because it isn't done yet.

 

This thread has also surprised me with how long people have been mapping -- I thought many of them were much newer. Thing is, the really new mappers like you and me have a much bigger head start than any of those people ever had in the '90s. There's so much shared knowledge, so many fewer limits to the engine, and so many great examples to follow that it's a lot easier for us to get started. Just keep trying!

[Bauul]

35 minutes ago, stru said:

Yeah but I get discouraged when I see something so vast and detailed and here I am with a small ugly brown room consisting of nothing but a broken teleporter and a cyberdemon with his head caught in the ceiling. 

Every map starts as an ugly brown room.  That's how my first map started (even including the cyberdemon stuck in the ceiling!) and it ended up alright considering.

 

My suggestion would be to think of a concept - it can be a simple one,  like "sewage processing" or "inside a volcano" or even just "big hole in the ground".  Then run with that.  Keep it focused on just that theme, don't try to make a humongous masterpiece or anything.  Limitations can actually help creativity - they stop you from scope creep.  

 

Finally, (although I'm bad at doing this myself) try sketching out the design on paper beforehand with a big thick Sharpie.  Just the broad outline, but it can help you work out the general flow of the map.

[Doomkid]

10 hours ago, stru said:

Yeah but I get discouraged when I see something so vast and detailed and here I am with a small ugly brown room consisting of nothing but a broken teleporter and a cyberdemon with his head caught in the ceiling. 

Some of us prefer these kinds of maps, believe it or not

[ukiro]

I printed this and read it religiously (I still have my 1994/1995 printout in a binder): http://www.gamers.org/dhs/helpdocs/dmsp1666.html

 

Understanding the inner workings of the game will not just make you a better mapper but also give you a whole lot of ideas and deeper appreciation of other people's works.

[UglyStru]

 

35 minutes ago, ukiro said:

I printed this and read it religiously (I still have my 1994/1995 printout in a binder): http://www.gamers.org/dhs/helpdocs/dmsp1666.html

 

Understanding the inner workings of the game will not just make you a better mapper but also give you a whole lot of ideas and deeper appreciation of other people's works.

 

In all seriousness, that seems good. However, how relevant is it nowadays? I feel like some of that may have become obsolete. 

[scifista42]

^ The text mostly consists of technical documentation of Doom-related data formats, all of which are of course still in use in today's wads. So the information itself definitely isn't obsolete. At most, it could be argued that the document as a whole is obsolete for the fact that there is doomwiki now, providing all of the same information and more.

Edited June 7, 2017 by scifista42

[ukiro]

These days you don't need to read that specific text (it was the only source available 23 years ago when I got started), but I reiterate: "Understanding the inner workings of the game will not just make you a better mapper but also give you a whole lot of ideas and deeper appreciation of other people's works."

 

Yes it's a lot of stuff you don't necessarily need for mapping, but it broadened my appreciation for the game tremendously. Reading that document is probably a primary reason why I am still here today.

[Kristian Nebula]

I started to map in 1996 with a shareware version of Deep 8.35 which had a linedef limit set to 800 per map. We were creating maps in a pitch-black room with my classmate when it was nearly +30c outside and our summer vacation went without a tan. Worked with it until late mid-98 and 99 got a try with DETH which was fun but returned to Deep soon after. 2005 changed into Doom Builder 1 and later into Doom Builder 2.

[iori]

DEU 5.21's tutor.doc, I still remember the epiphany I had when I figured out how to swap sidedefs to fix unclosed sectors - like I finally understood what a sector was ;)

Moved to Wadauthor when working with Doom Legacy in the early 2000s.

 

Doom Builder is so easy by comparison! Almost too easy... I think was more imaginative when I couldn't iterate so quickly.

[Albertoni]

It was in 2004 or so, I believe. Got Doom Builder and made some random stuff. Don't remember the tutorials I followed though. I believe I made 4 maps, of which only one was worth anything.

If anyone ever played my WAD Shrooms, the ending of MAP01 and most of MAP02 is a tribute to that good map. Started on floating bridges, had a little maze, the concept where there are two paths to the key and the ending of each would throw you at the start of the other, and the geometry of the final room.

 

My first map, man, that was so glitchy, so many unclosed sectors outside the map... It got to a point where ZDoom would legitimately choke on it and display weird glitches everywhere. Then I stopped for 11 years or so, before picking things up because @Negrostrike convinced me to. If I ever get a cacoward I'll treat him to a beer.

[UglyStru]

I never took geometry in high school so I already feel like I'm a step behind everyone else.. 

[Phade102]

33 minutes ago, stru said:

I never took geometry in high school so I already feel like I'm a step behind everyone else.. 

Neither did I. I never finished high school.