inkoalawetrust

Well the fact that you are asking how to make a mod as complicated as Brutal Doom indicates that you won't be able to make something like it until you learn everything else that goes into making a Doom mod. So to start:

• To make a mod like Brutal Doom, which adds (Some) new enemies, extends and upgrades Doom's existing enemies and adds new game mechanics, you will need to use a source port based on ZDoom since DeHackEd* is out of the question for something like this, you'll have to use DECORATE (Or ZScript, more on that later.) and ACS.
• To get started with DECORATE I'd suggest reading through the links in this page on the ZDoom wiki, each link is roughly listed from top to bottom in order of complexity.
• If you want to also target the Zandronum source port like Brutal Doom does then you don't have any choice besides using DECORATE and ACS anyway, which brings me to my last point.
• DECORATE is actually deprecated now (In GZDoom.) in favour of ZScript, but Zandronum is based on a really old version of GZDoom and hasn't been updated in 3 years now, so it doesn't support ZScript, and even its' implementation of DECORATE is much older than GZDoom's. Plus it's best that you learn DECORATE first anyway since I'm guessing that you don't know much or anything about programming**, so it's best that you start with something simpler like DECORATE and once you get a good enough grasp of that, you can move over to ZScript. Unless like I said before you only want to make mods for Zandronum in which case you could probably just stick to DECORATE.

You may also want to join the (G)ZDoom Discord server, since there you can talk to others who know how to make mods and ask questions about any problems you may have that aren't mentioned on the wiki***.
 

3 hours ago, Nevander said:

The core of any mod though is DECORATE. 

Not anymore, not for GZDoom at least, nowadays the basis of any mod is ZScript, IIRC even the DECORATE code that GZDoom runs is converted and compiled into ZScript on startup.

*The only real way to make mods for vanilla Doom, though there are some extensions of DeHackEd like Boom's BEX which IIRC is supported by almost every source port. And DEHEXTRA which increases DeHackEd's limits and adds 2910 new states or code pointers.
**Which is what ZScript pretty much is.
***Oh also keep in mind that you'll get at least a few responces in the server to just use ZScript instead, and probably get guided into trying to use ZScript right off the bat as well.

2 hours ago, seed said:

 

Yeah, the over the top violence is just one of the reasons why BD is no longer my cup of tea. I enjoy graphic violence but I prefer it being done tastefully, like the Build games do, and the MK Arcade trilogy.

 

An Imp bleeding 5 gallons after one shot or getting utterly mutilated/disfigured by bullets? I don't really find much fun in that anymore... There are indeed better violence mods out there, and BD loses its novelty factor way too fast.

As Mark himself has already said (And I did as well in the reply you are responding to, since Bolognese is basically a standalone version of BD's blood and gore.), you can change how much blood enemies produce when shoot/cut/killed/whatever in the mods' settings, so if you don't like the amount of blood you can tone it down or even straight up turn it off by lowering the max amount of blood and gore to 0.

2 minutes ago, seed said:

 

Can second this. I can respect BD for what it is, and years ago I used to like it myself, but this view did an almost full 180 turn since.

Well I'm not saying that as someone that dislikes Brutal Doom seeing as it is one of the only mods I consistently play and like even if I usually just play Project Brutality for the extra weapons and monsters.

I was saying that because I know most people on Doomworld (Or rather most people who know about Doom mods in general.) dislike Brutal Doom and see it as having ruined Doom, while most people outside of Doom modding that know about BD have an either positive or neutral view towards it. So if for example someone said that they like Brutal Doom's gore you'd get some people suggesting Nashgore instead, since it's smaller, more universal and runs faster*, while others would just say that the extra blood and violence in general ruins Doom.

*Though I myself would rather use Bolognese since it allows you to set how much blood and gibs are spawned and how much damage it takes for enemies to be gibbed.

7 minutes ago, Doom-X-Machina said:

Can we agree that for all the flaws in it's programming (and I assume Sgt. Mark isn't a professional programmer, just a huge fan like ourselves who wanted to make something cool and share it) Brutal Doom does have some pretty neat stuff in it?

Nope, most people would argue that there are several other mods that implement the stuff that Brutal Doom has and do so in a cleaner and more efficient manner than BD. Not to mention that more than a few people just consider nothing (Or almost nothing.) that Brutal Doom adds to be good in the first place, whether or not somebody else did it in a more efficient manner.

13 minutes ago, 0o0[ULTIM4TE]L1FE[F0RM]0o0 said:

Okay but what did you mean by that:

 

 

He means that he likes the game mechanics of the mod but not the over abundance of blood and gore (Though that can be toned down.).

Why is a Sergeant holding the cover for some video game/movie while standing in front of some stock nature clipart/drawing.

You can tell Santa is evil because he is smoking a cigar and grinning.

Profile picture made with drugs.

7 hours ago, AinuTheTaken said:

No. You can still run GZDoom in SoftPoly.

While you can do that it usually doesn't help much more than allowing you to run GZDoom at all, since the same computers that don't have OpenGL 3.3+ will also probably not be powerful enough to run GZDoom with SoftPoly at a decent framerate.

As for a map editor that you can use on a PC with only OpenGL 2.1 like mine. You should just download the last version of GZDoom Builder Bugfix from here, right now I don't think there's still that big of a gap between GZDB-BF and UDB outside of some major new additions such as visual slope handles, but I haven't really been able to test UDB too much when I have access to a PC with OpenGL 3.3+ so there's probably more major additions compared to GZDB-BF by now. 
Also obviously the more time passes the more of a gap there will be between GZDB-BF and UDB.

6 hours ago, MyNameIsKeith said:

 

Yeah, you're right. I thought on the idea of a USB Drive, but here's the thing... I don't have one. I used to, but I'm pretty sure it broke. I'd ask my mom for one, but I'm pretty sure she would say know because I've been bothering her on Christmas gifts (And you heard it here first, I'm kind of an a-hole), and because she told me she spent over $2,000 on X-mas gifts for my whole family, I feel like I shouldn't bother her with that.

 

Actually, this morning I went on my home PC and uploaded a folder of the Doom Builder 2 files to drive, and successfully managed to download them onto my school one. The thing is, that my school computer doesn't have DirectX, so there's a problem right there. Still, I appreciate and thank you for your recommendations.

USB Drives are pretty cheap, you can get one that has 32 or 64 GB of storage for only 3-5 euros. In fact I plan on buying FIVE of them for only 20 euros because the 32 GB USB I myself use to store stuff such as GZDoom and UDB has a corrupted folder, and because I can't transfer that data to my desktop due to it only having 5 GB of space left, to allow me to reformat and repair the USB and put the stuff back in. I have to instead buy more thumb drives, and want to buy even more than needed just in case.*

As for DirectX I'm surprised that is actually the case. With school computers I expected the problem to be the opposite (Not having OpenGL 3.3+) if said problem even existed due to that version of OpenGL that GZDoom and UDB use already being pretty old. In that case you should just get Ultimate Doom Builder instead since it uses OpenGL instead of DirectX for rendering. In fact you should just use UDB anyway or at least the last version of GZDB Bugfix since both of these are far more recent and full of useful features than the original Doom Builder 2, which is archaic by now.


*Including a 128 GB USB to put a copy of my entire hard drive in it, because my HDD is only 74 GB large.

As Kappes said porting a complete map editor for a video game online as a web app is anything but simple, the only simple thing about it is coming up with the idea.

However I'm pretty sure you just want to be able to use (Ultimate) Doom Builder and GZDoom or any other port on the school computers or any other PC you want to. So I'd suggest simply putting UDB and GZDoom and whatever else you want on a USB stick like I myself have to be able to run them from anywhere without putting them on the actual computer. No need to email yourself the files or something. However if the permission restrictions on your school PCs are so strict that you can't even run non-whitelisted executables then there isn't much you can do.

23 hours ago, OpenRift said:

Dragging files on an exe is not really a unique trait of GZDoom, so that's obviously not what I'm referring to. I think most people who use source ports regularly use a launcher like ZDL or Doom Launcher anyway

That wasn't my point, I know it's not unique to ZDoom. I'm just pointing out that it's not as tedious to use as you claim it is.
 

23 hours ago, OpenRift said:

How advanced GZDoom is isn't really what I have a problem with, it's the fact that it's the only engine that is that advanced.

I don't see how it being the only Doom based engine that is that advanced is a disadvantage or problem of some kind outside of it basically having no competition of any kind.
 

23 hours ago, OpenRift said:

The options menu. You cannot look at that maze of submenus and tell me that it is a user-friendly layout, let alone noob-friendly. You could absolutely trim the fat there and clean it up. 

 

But lets take a look at the elephant in the room: the default settings. I just reset my GZDoom settings and was reminded of how fucking awful they are. And I'm not just talking about texture filtering either. Like, I spend a good 30-35 minutes (yes, I checked) trying to get GZDoom looking vanilla as possible, and even then there were STILL settings that I couldn't change. Not to mention there's probably numerous settings where I have NO IDEA which would be the more vanilla option. I think this alone is what takes away from the experience the most. Sure, PrBoom+ has bad default automap colors, but everything else is easily configurable.

I don't really consider these even when all put together to be some kind of dealbreaker outside of the Trilinear filtering being on by default and making everything look like Doomguy needs glasses. As for it not being close to vanilla, I doubt most people use GZDoom for a fully or almost completely vanilla experience, there's other forks for an experience closer to vanilla, while GZDoom's main advantage is as you said being so advanced in terms of what it has and can do that no other fork even comes close.

S - Ports I often use and really like. I'm assuming that's vanilla Doom and not Chocolate Doom since the other graphic is identicaly except for the white background, but either way while I haven't really used Chocolate Doom much I still put it on S since it's the way to play (Almost) completely vanilla Doom natively on a modern system without using emulation or having to actually use a PC with MS-DOS.
A - Ports I used often pretty much just because my PC doesn't have OpenGL 3.3 to run GZDoom. I primarly use LZDoom on my ancient PC to play GZDoom or even just Doom stuff in general since it's relatively up to date with GZDoom and supports stuff like ZScript which Zandronum doesn't. However I also use Zandronum on maps that are too laggy to play on LZDoom, but besides that I don't use it since I don't care about multiplayer.
B - Ports I don't like
C - Ports I really don't like I guess ? I have tried Eternity but didn't like it since it seems to just kind of be in a limbo between a modern source port and one closer to vanilla. For example it has some advanced features and UDMF support but doesn't have a hardware renderer so you can't even look up and down without Y-Shearing. Also when I went ahead to delete it some sound related program that Eternity used kept running in the background so I couldn't delete the folder until I manually closed that program from task manager. Though I did mention that issue on the Discord server for Eternity so it's probably fixed by now.
D - Ports I haven't used.

 

2 hours ago, OpenRift said:

GZDoom: Bloated, ludicrously overrated port made by a salty member. Now, don't get me wrong, there are some great mods for GZDoom (VietDoom and @MikeyScoots's Hell Unleashed seems pretty sick). But the port itself is just.... yucky... Yucky in so many ways.... For a port that's oftentimes the beginner's port (including my own), it's not a very user-friendly experience for noobies.

I wouldn't exactly call dragging a file or two on an EXE file user unfriendly. Also as far as I can tell pretty much no other fork of the Doom engine is as advanced and has as much stuff as GZDoom does (Besides EDGE from what I've read about it, which I also want to use eventually.), so that's a pretty good reason for it to be "ludicrously overrated". Also how is it bloated ? It's only around 12-13 MB large with the engine PK3 included, I have dozens of images on my computer that are about as large, if not larger, than that.

Also VietDoom is more of a Zandronum mod since Mark wants it to have proper multiplayer.

1 hour ago, Linguica said:

I choose to interpret this as "where would you feel comfortable sleeping if you were teleported into a stock Doom / Doom 2 map?" and my answer is the secret room in the red key building in Map02. Unreachable by the demons, there's a window, and an emergency teleport exit if things go bad.

There's demons in that room from the start though. I don't think sleeping with possesed soldiers armed with shotguns would be safe.

So basically Hideous Destructor becomes real ?

With how 2020 has been and is going this is less of an if and more of a when. And the when is probably next month lol

More seriously the games (The original ones at least.) don't really go into any detail on how the invasion went down exactly so you can't really give a good answer to how it would go down IRL.


But if the demons could just teleport and appear in out of nowhere like in the games and there is a pretty much unlimited amount of them then we'd just get overrun and constantly ambushed along the way, which would make organizing against them pretty hard when a Cyberdemon or dozens and/or hundrends of Imps and Pinkies could just pop out of nowhere in the middle of a military base or inside the Cheyenne Mountain Complex at any moment. And with nowhere to really hide or go since a demon could teleport in at any moment.
 

4 hours ago, The BMFG said:

how would you fight back?

I can pretty easily think of how an armed force would deal with each of vanilla Doom's demons, but for me and most people there probably wouldn't be much you can really do. Even if you are armed just an Imp or a few could kill you since as Lila said the demons would be closer to, well demons, than just mostly cannon fodder.
If any single unarmed, or only armed with melee weapons, human (Or even multiple for that matter) ever got to the point where they are within like 2-4 meters of any of Doom's demons they'd basically lose against them 100% of the time. The Lost Souls are about the weakest enemies in the original Doom games* and they'd still be likely to kill you simply because they are on fire, so if one of them rammed you there's a chance that you'd get burned.

2 minutes ago, Artman2004 said:

Would the demons even be able to take the damage they do in the games?

Well realistically they wouldn't since they are usually just made out of flesh and bone. But that wasn't really specified if it is the case in the original post.

*Yes the Zombiemen are weaker in the games but if their guns are anything like real guns then at worst for them they are just armed with pistols, which still makes them more dangerous, or are armed with actual automatic rifles like they seem to be carrying.

Honestly I haven't really used many source ports outside of the ones based on ZDoom like Zandronum/ GZDoom and LZDoom so that alone shows that I'm not much of a purist. I also can't really do without being able to vetically freelook which is even less vanilla. And even when I can freelook I prefer not having any Y-shearing which limits me to non-software rendering ports or to not using a software renderer which is also less vanilla.

If I had a computer that had OpenGL 3.3 and above instead of only OpenGL 2.1 I'd just use GZDoom with dynamic lighting, dynamic shadows and ambient occlusion on. Especially since the latter adds more depth to the levels that is lost without the light fade out of the software renderer. On the subject of that, when I have access to a computer that can run GZDoom I almost always set the light mode to either Doom or Software to emulate the software renderers' light fadeout because I prefer it to the normally pretty flat lighting, especially on LZDoom which I have to use since I only have OpenGL 2.1.

But to answer the list of questions here's my answers:

 

8 hours ago, Scorpinax said:

-do you play with autoaim or do you use mouselook?

I always play with mouselook, plus autoaim can really fuck you over especially with enemies like Lost Souls, or by just not hitting what you want to hit.
 

8 hours ago, Scorpinax said:

-do map sets that incorporate jumping and crouching as something you HAVE to do bother you? 

No they don't, even some of my own maps require jumping and crouching for some sections.
 

8 hours ago, Scorpinax said:

-does it bother you if a map set has some things in it that don't perfectly fit the DOOM style?

Depends, if it's a Total Conversion or something then I obviously won't mind, if it's supposed to be a mod that adds on Doom then I do find weird if there's stuff that doesn't stylistically or thematically fit, but again it depends on the situation.

8 hours ago, Scorpinax said:

-do scaled sprites bother you?  Do you want everything that old doom pixel way? 

I do find it odd to have very high resolution sprites since it looks weird when they are ultra high resolution 2D images that move around based on the viewing angle like the vanilla and just low resolution in general sprites do. Basically there's a sense of unrealness and cartoonyness when it's low resolution sprites, and it allows you to fill in the details yourself, while with realistic or at least just high resolution sprites it looks weird.
 

8 hours ago, Scorpinax said:

-Do custom monsters or weapons affect your enjoyment of the wad you're playing?

I play Project Brutality pretty often so take a guess. I only really have an issue if they are something out of a TerryWAD (And even then I may not mind depending on the situation.) or if they are just really unfair and/or don't fit at all with the rest of the mod/level.
 

8 hours ago, Scorpinax said:

-do you prefer the music to be MIDI?

If the music is good and/or fits then I don't really care if it's a midi or in a format like MP3, WAV or OGG.

Here's some of my own cursed Doom images.







 

That's some scary photoshopped in bacon.

Looks like me staring at the mirror.

I wonder if someone will eventually use this to reimplement the scrapped secret Asteroids minigame that was supposed to be accessible in the automap but was scrapped ? It definitely would be interesting to see. Maybe it could even be made as a demo of what this exploit can do if it wouldn't be too to add in. Though it's probably unnecesary since you've already made a snake game demo, and the demo.wad you've released already arguably has even more impressive features such as freelook, jumping, colored lighting, the ability to change sprite colors, fog etc .

I'm pretty sure that I legit have the shittiest computer in this thread so far.

For the past 2+ years I've been trying (And repeatedly failing.) to save up enough money to buy a brand new proper PC. Why ? Here's why:

Intel Pentium E5300
2 GB DDR2 RAM
Intel Q45/Q43 Express Chipset (What dedicated GPU ? lmao)
74GB Seagate ST380815AS (No, this isn't some kind of joke, oh also I only have a little over 5 GB of free space as you could probably guess.)
A 60hz Samsung monitor*
A 10 euro Nod keyboard (I could probably find out the specific model, but it's not really neccesary.)
Some 4-5 euro Philips mouse lol

If I had a better computer I'd have pretty much never thought of playing a game as archaic as Doom outside of maybe trying it out on DOSBox for about an hour, and would've never been on this forum in the first place obviously. But here I am since Doom is pretty much about the only game this old small form factor office shitbox from 2007-8 can run. My current smartphone is literally more powerful than my PC in every way.

Oh also since some people have posted photos of their PCs here's one of mine as well.




*Previously I had a 1280x1024 monitor that I had bought all the way back in 2013-4 along with the PC itself, but it crapped out last month so I had to buy this new 1920x1080 Samsung monitor while using my own TV as a monitor until it arrived.

1 hour ago, Noiser said:

Heretic, Hexen, HacX, Strife, Chex Quest, Rise of the Triad, Dark Forces, Witchaven, Powerslave. Descent is also kinda doom-ish.

None of these are really obscure though. There are some weird ones that may not be your cup of tea, but I like them for what they are: Mars 3D, Hades 2 and Quiver. There are also Wolf3D clones like Corridor 7, Blake Stone and Nitemare 3D. Again, not for everyone, but if you like Wolf3D you will probably enjoy them as well.

I wouldn't call Hexen and Strife Doom clones, they are pretty different in premise and gameplay even if they are based on (licensed forks of) the Doom engine, Heretic I'm not too sure though but I've heard that it's pretty similar to Doom but with heavier fantasy elements so it could probably count.
But Chex Quest uses a barely modified licensed Doom engine fork that just has some really specific and weird changes (Such as apperantly allowing for longer text strings to be displayed.), but is otherwise Doom with different sprites and HacX is literally a DeHackEd TC so those are definitely clones.
No idea about the others or what they even are, ROTT is that game that runs on an expanded Wolf3D engine right ? I don't think that specifically counts as a Doom clone as much as it does maybe a Wolf3D clone, or a pimped out Wolf3D.

My addition to the list of Doom clones would be Marathon, which was a Mac OS game made by Bungie which is very blatantly copying Doom, and from what I've read here and there it was basically Doom for Mac users.
 

Another one I've heard of is some obscure Chinese Doom clone that was never released called Mars 3D, IIRC some custom actors and a texture set on Realm667 actually even use modified and unmodified assets from it.
 

3 hours ago, CBM said:

I Think oblige has 2 weaknesses

 

1 it has way too few premade map pieces to place

That's pretty spot on, not only can it not actually generate rooms themselves but the list of premade rooms it CAN semi-inteligently stich together is very small, leading to alot of obvious repetition.

3 hours ago, CBM said:

2 it can not make GZDoom 3d levels

(EDIT: apparently it can, but it does not use 3D floors, dynamic lights, reflective floors etc)

ObAddon DOES have the option to place and use prefabs with 3D floors and dynamic lights, though the 3D floors are pretty basic, being just a simple 3D platform or two, it can also generate 3D skyboxes and those look REALLY good and especially that sci-fi one. Definitely haven't seen it generating reflective floors though.
Another major weakness it has is that it cannot support UDMF without ObAddon just becoming a fork of Oblige so features like vertex slopes can't be used, in fact even its ability to use features that already exist in the binary ZDoom formats is pretty limited. For example it cannot actually generate polyobjects due to a technical limitation. As far as I can tell it also can't really make and use scripted events, with its only ACS usage being for custom ACS+DECORATE actors from Zandronum compatability, and probably for any boss battles it generates if you set it to, since that healthbar is probably made with ACS.

3 hours ago, CBM said:

I Guess it could serve to make a base level that a human could then improve afterwards

Generating maps and claiming them as your own is already frowned upon and I don't think adding on and modifying a generated map would be seen much better.
But you could definitely use ObAddon's decorations and probably even rooms as inspiration as I have a few times though, since those are still made by people to be placed down anyway. I even once asked if I could have some trucks and cars I made out of sectors added as placeable decorations once but they apperantly exceeded the size limit for a decoration.

Because Oblige has been discontinued since around 2017 I'd suggest downloading and using ObAddon instead. It has A TON more features and options and can generate far more varied and larger levels than Oblige along with ZDoon specific features such as custom DECORATE/ZScript actors, slopes, 3D floors, 3D skyboxes etc.

However there is one fundamental problem that Oblige has with how it actually generates maps which ObAddon can't do anything about either and that would require making a new level generator from scratch or remaking Oblige from the ground up. And that is that Oblige/ObAddon seem to pretty much just stich together rooms, hallways etc from a large list of rooms without many limitations for what it can stich together with what. Not to mention that as others have already mentioned it can't really just know what looks and plays well and especially not when Oblige works by just sticking together premade rooms.

As a result a lot of Oblige/ObAddon maps don't look and/or play as well as maps made by other people who can actually know and understand what actually makes a map good or bad, not to mention learn and improve which Oblige/ObAddon cannot do, not without being programmed to do so, but again, that would require remaking the generator from scratch.

Another issue is that due to how levels are generated it's almost always pretty obvious when a map has been generated by Oblige or ObAddon because they follow a pretty distinct style on how they are structured layoutwise and how they look. Whereas with people making maps all of them have different ways on how they approach and do things, and can change up how they make maps as well if they want or need to while Oblige/ObAddon can really only do it in one way*.

Also another issue also stemming from how it generates maps, and especially from the fact that it has a limited list of rooms it simply picks from instead of being able to actually create new rooms from scratch, is that there's often repetition in level and room designs and layouts, with multiple similar rooms, sections, decorations etc



The only way to really bypass all those limitations and make maps that are indistinguishable from man made maps and almost always unique and made from scratch instead of using prefabs AND with an actual (If not limited.) understanding of what makes a map good or bad, would be to make an artificial neural network for generating Doom levels and then train it with almost everything from the idgames archive (Above a certain rating and amount of them to get good results most likely.). That way it could LEARN how to make maps and get better at it like an actual person would instead of following hard coded parameters and code to stich together mostly random rooms from a large list.
But of course the problem with that is that I doubt the vast majority of the Doom community has any knowledge on how to actually do something like this, and the ones that do would have to invest A TON of time and resources into making and training a mapmaking neural network.

*Or in the case of ObAddon 2-4 more ways/styles since it also has map generation settings such as "Streets Mode" that generates urban levels instead.

 

Quote

Man fuck SLIGE.  If I wanted to run around in some randomly-computer-generated crap I'd play Minecraft.  

You're like 10+ years too late to be complaining about SLIGE lol, also I'd say Minecraft's procedual generation is pretty good.

1. Making boring and/or repetetive level and room designs that are too similar to other sections of the same map or to different maps I've made. More specifically I'm afraid of making stuff like simple rectangular rooms with not much detail for example, or pretty much anything that looks too similar to most Doom 2 levels.
2. Making bad texture/flat choices that don't fit for the room I'm making, similar to that, using the same texture/flat too many times.
3. Similar to the above, using the default Doom Builder textures for Doom maps of STARTAN2, FLOOR0_1, and CEIL1_1. I avoid using them the majority of the time because being the default textures makes me feel like anything that uses them in my maps is just unfinished and is using them as placeholders, and I feel like anyone else that may play my maps will think the same.

However these 3 ones are more like perceived fears than anything else. The things I'm afraid of that are definitely very real are:

Losing motivation to work on a map halfway through and/or not having any ideas on what to do or make next, when I first began making maps around July 2019 I had no idea what I was doing, so much so that it took me literally MONTHS to finally make a working door*, but I at least had tons of motivation to keep working on maps and a lot of ideas. But around the time last year that I began to redo my third ever map that is now Lab Infestation, due to being too dissapointed with the original. I had began losing motivation and ideas on what to do next as mentioned in the original thread itself (Not because of being dissapointed with the original lab.wad though.). So now while I have WAY more technical know-how on how to make maps**, I have lost most of my creativity and motivation in exchange.

Rarely ever finishing my maps, if it's not because of the above mentioned two issues it'll be because playtesting is the most tedious and frustrating aspect of working on a map. To ensure that a map can be played from start to finish I have to play the map A LOT of times over. Every time I reach something making the player unable to progress, such as a room with too many monsters and too little health or ammo, I have to make that change such as adding more ammo and health, then be forced to replay the whole map until the next unbeatable section. This also means that I can't get anyone else to playtest my maps since nobody would want to play through a map, reach a room they can't progress past, tell me the issue, wait for 1-10 minutes for me to fix it, have me send them over the new version of the map with the fix, replay the map until the next unbeatable section, then rinse and repeat dozens of times over until they can reach the end of the map.

As a result of those two huge issues, I haven't released any more maps so far besides arena.wad and Lab Infestation since I usually never finish my maps. However I am planning on eventually releasing a small mapset of all the maps that I HAVE finished, which there's around 6-7 of so far.

These are all the mapping fears and issues I have that I can remember. Both the probably perceived ones and the very real ones that have prevented me from releasing any maps in about a year now.


*I did actually somehow make a working door on my very first and very broken map but I was unable to replicate it again.
**For example here is what the original version of my first ever working map looks like, and here is what my remake of it that I finished working on last week looks like.

what