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SavageCorona

This has turned into the official "Help SavageCorona learn to map really good".

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Good job. When starting out, I'd recommend focusing more on the actual architecture of a room/map before using small grid minute detailing.

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I was just doing that to test it out. Also it still seems to be locked down to a 32x32 grid, and / doesn't do anything.

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there is also a button at the bottom right that changes grid size.

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SavageCorona said:

disable the snap to grid

Easiest way to do that temporarily is to hold down a Shift key while dragging stuff to where you want it, you can also bind a key to the "Snap to Grid" button in Preferences/Controls - both Caps Lock and Scroll Lock work nicely if you'd like visual confirmation when snap to grid is disabled.

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Bump:
I managed to learn something from 1994TU.wad:


Path to success in good map detailing or failure in everything else?
The texture alignment on the bottom parts is dumb because apparently I did the top alignment then when I tried to align the bottom ones it moves the top one. No idea why.

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Detailing for starters, should not look like that. Unless you're pulling that 2px grid consistently, everything will look very out of place and incessant because there's not enough of it to cover the map. Also, your texture alignment's off.

Path to success is good layout and good architecture, kept to a standard you can maintain for the entire map.

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All those broken bits of panels need to have their sidedefs with the STAR texture set to lower unpegging. That should align them. If they're still misaligned, press shift+A on the unbroken wall to align them vertically. Pressing A by itself aligns them horizontally.

(Don't turn the lower unpegging off after the autoalign)

EDIT: GG, Jay.

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SavageCorona said:

The texture alignment on the bottom parts is dumb because apparently I did the top alignment then when I tried to align the bottom ones it moves the top one. No idea why.


You do know about upper/lower pegging the textures, right?

Also, I have no idea what that's supposed to be - never a good sign with 'detail'. Nah, I get it.

Also, I was ninja'ed there. Good going.

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It's actually the 4px grid, and it was more of an experiment than anything. I'm sort of just building a map with a showcase of techniques rather than anything else.

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SavageCorona said:

It's actually the 4px grid

Well damn, that sure made a difference.

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Why does the blood transforms into lava?
If you want a lava fall you can get"cc4-tex.wad" , you know.
Or just change the lava flat into blood.

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It's supposed to be lava leaking out of the wall because it's an underground thing. There was no lava fall and that was the closest I could find, and I don't really want to use any custom wads, I'm making it Doom 2/Boom compatible only using Doom 2 resources. It doesn't make that much difference anyway, they're both red, just one has a bit of yellow in it.

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You could use the LAVAWALL texture to give the impression of lava flowing without custom textures.

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There doesn't seem to be a LAVAWALL texture in there, unless you're talking about the boss brain texture, which looks weird on such a small indent.

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My guess is he's meaning to refer to FIRELAVA.

Either way, you're definitely focusing too much on small details -- layout, gameplay, and large-scale architectural design really ought to come first before ever attempting to make fancy detailwork. Otherwise you'll be guaranteed to have an end result that neither looks nor plays nor feels well; detailing is such a timesink that you'll never get around to doing the important stuff before getting bored. :P

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Xaser said:

My guess is he's meaning to refer to FIRELAVA.

Either way, you're definitely focusing too much on small details -- layout, gameplay, and large-scale architectural design really ought to come first before ever attempting to make fancy detailwork. Otherwise you'll be guaranteed to have an end result that neither looks nor plays nor feels well; detailing is such a timesink that you'll never get around to doing the important stuff before getting bored. :P

Here here. Always focus on layout first IMO. Write detailing ideas down as you go and try to implement them in intelligent ways (i.e. ways that don't detract from the gameplay experience). Small-scale details can be neat when utilized properly, but it's very easy for something to transform from interesting to overdone without a keen eye.

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Instead of that horrid looking sector-based detail, make a custom STARGR texture with a hole blasted in it, and put the tech/blood stuff on a wall in a sector behind it. And what the others said, focus on the big picture first, no one cares about your detailing if the gameplay sucks.

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Da Werecat said:

Thou shalt not make walls out of sectors with 0 height.


Most of the time this is absolutely true. (e.g pillars in the middle of a room should never use 0 height sectors.)

But I will respectfully suggest that there are times where 0 height sectors make for really effective walls. To wit:



I wanted to have the rusted metal border just above the water go all the way back. So I used a 0 height sector and used upper and lower textures to create that transition, rather than have the METAL2 texture go all the way down to the water.

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Da Werecat said:

Yeah, I'm using this trick myself. More of an exception.


Agreed. When I started mapping, I used 0 height sectors for all the wrong reasons.

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Based on Kyka's screenshot, here's another trick. you can make that support texture with 3 rivets out of SUPPORT3.

Make your wall 32 wide, and add a vertex in the middle to split it into 2 16-long walls. Shift-left once on the right wall to move it to the left by 8 pixels. Boom, new support texture without custom textures.

You can also make a 16-wide SUPPORT texture with just 1 rivet by splitting a 16-length wall into 2 lines of 8 units long. Shift-right once on the right wall to bring it right 8 pixels.
By the way, the x-offset of the left texture should be 0 in both cases.

There's also an 8-wide version with no rivets, same method, but it's not as useful.

Here's an image showing what I mean, click it to enlarge if necessary.

There, all SUPPORT3 variants.

It might actually be possible to have some other combinations by using the narrow panel in the middle of the full 64-wide texture. I'm pretty sure all my experiments for 4 rivets on 1 panel failed though. Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough.

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This can be done with the LITE3/5 textures as well to fit weird lengthed gaps, because the textures are essentiall grey corners with a pure white middle.

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LITE3 is my favourite texture because it made my sister think there was a white key due to its use around those marble carved faces in I think E2M5.

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As a novice mapper, I can give you some advice based on what I've learned.

1. Download Ultimate Simplicity and study it. The project was made to prove a point when people were still learning how to properly map in Zdoom and made a lot of superfluous detail that actually made the maps uglier. As the name suggests, the maps are SIMPLE but clean and have a certain balance and finesse to them that many Zdoom maps of the time simply lacked. Any novice mapper should pick this up. Although I made some really cool stuff in my first map (which is still WIP) before playing the WAD, studying Simplicity made my life easier when making the design cleaner. You should really do this whether you want to be a Zdoom mapper or not.

2. Study UDoom and its architecture and for your first map I recommend using only the DEFAULT Doom/Doom 2 textures. Using only the default textures basically forces you to overcome the game's limits and be creative, this is hugely beneficial to your skills and will make you a much better mapper than using Zdoom. Oh and make simple (but clean and pleasant) architecture in the beginning, don't make sector furniture or try to make the maps too "realistic". The best maps are a combination of abstract shapes and some degree of realism/believably. You might say that the default texture pallete is too limited but you can do some truly awesome stuff using just Doom 1 stuff. EMBRACE what Doom is about while still trying to make it more refined or believable.

3. Here is my modding motto "The first thing I release on the internet should always be better than what other people post on the internet for the first time" In short, have standards and don't release a bad map simply because you are new.

4. Do not be afraid to delete rooms of your maps if they are not up to snuff. I've done this millions of times in my first map (and still am). Again, have standards and if it's for the good of your map DO IT, no matter how much time you invested in it.

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