Noob Doom Mapper: Doom format vs Doom in Hexen format?

Death-Destiny said:

I admire the scenery even though I play fairly quickly. IMO, a well constructed level can be admired even in the background as you fight the demons. That's one reason why I don't follow the tons of detail school of thought, because for as much time as it takes to make all the details, I'm not the type of player who will stop mid-game to stare at them anyway. IMO, good aesthetics are the ones that a person can see clearly and from many places and that can be admired on the go.

Well yeah, I generally play this way too. I only pause if I feel that secrets are likely to be found in the vicinity or if I'm surprised with some scenery that's far above the norm. I'm not complaining about speedy Doom appreciation, but some friends in particular manage to irk me by the way they play games in general. They're used to shooters like the Metroid console FPS games, so they won't even glance around a room for ammo and would never look for secrets without a strategy guide in front of them.

GreyGhost said:

StoneFrog's probably following the "robust debate" and wondering "WTF have I started?". :-)

Good God, what have I started? :P

Anyway, I've been tinkering with DiH. Personally I haven't done much with the Hexen format, kind of defeating the purpose.

I don't have much to show with my maps yet, this is probably an odd way to do it, but my first project is a 5 map WAD that has a story following DOOM's mindset - "hai u r must escape wtfbbq ebil demon letz find wepunz and kick his azz". I admit my map isn't the prettiest either, there's just some days I feel like putting more love into things.

On topic again, frankly you're probably right about DiD being a good start, I'm really only using DiH for some random things...perhaps counter-productive in one way or another. I don't know.

SPECULATE!

Well, you might as well keep mapping in DiH. If you upload a wad for playtesting you're guaranteed to hear constructive criticism (because no wad is perfect), and listening to that is the most important thing.

I've been a big mapper for Warcraft III, as well as Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, and I've dabbled a bit in the Source engine.

Despite the age I'm finding Doom mapping harder...but whatever. :P Thanks for everybody's opinions...what few there are.

What you start with first is the easiest. I made maps with DoomCAD back in the days when Internet wasn't cheap and Doom was still rather new. I got so accustomed to making things by putting vertices, then linedefs, then sectors that several years after, trying to make models in Blender, I'm still more comfortable micromanaging vertices than using boolean tools or whatever other things true modelers use to create shapes.

I actually like vanilla mapping quite a lot. I've been around here since 03 but never released my levels, mostly because I wouldn't finish them. Eventually I tried making zdoom maps. I did start one that was kinda cool, where you teleport from an orbiting ship down to a hazy hellish world, and all your comrades get slaughtered in front of you, and you have to jump down a creepy hole made of skin and then you're in this cave of skin grossness and

it wasn't that good at all. I've only started producing maps that I feel I can submit online recently. I think it helped that I stopped using advanced features, and focused on basic gameplay and visuals. I just came out with a wad that focuses on puzzles - without limiting myself to vanilla format, I may have gotten hung up on trying to make impressive zdoom puzzles that end up detracting from classic doom awesomeness.

I wonder if I ever get the idea of mapping for Heretic, if I'd better start mapping for Doom first to get the basics or if I can go on Vanilla Heretic directly... ?

Naan said:

I wonder if I ever get the idea of mapping for Heretic, if I'd better start mapping for Doom first to get the basics or if I can go on Vanilla Heretic directly... ?

You can go mapping Heretic directly. It's not more complicated than mapping Doom, so learning Doom mapping to do Heretic mapping makes as much sense as learning Heretic mapping to do Doom mapping. Some line/sector effects are different so if you were teaching yourself Doom just to do Heretic afterwards it would just give you confusing informations.

The vanilla Heretic engine can be exploited in some interesting ways that the Doom engine can't be, but even Raven didn't use these tricks so don't worry about learning them. Otherwise, starting with Heretic and starting with Doom is roughly the same.