DGC Map Pack Collaboration

[sorceress]

#9475

I was chatting with Tijn earlier about Doom month, and he suggested the idea of us (DGC) creating our own map pack, as a community effort/collaboration.

While I don’t have a lot of experience with doom map creation, I know some other club members do have good experience with the tools and the general knowhow.

The question is, is there enough interest in our community to create something like this?

I recall a similar communal project was attemped on the doomworld forums a couple of years ago, and what should have been a 1 month collaboration ended up taking almost a year… and those people knew what they were doing!

So I think a full pack of ~30 levels would be very ambitious for DGC to pull off in 1-2 months, and a smaller pack would be a more realistic goal for us.

Reply with your thoughts, ideas, volunteer or whatever. I’m interested to see what we can do together 🙂

[dr_st]

#9477

On Doomer Boards they frequently create a map pack in a month, but it’s usually ~10 levels, not 30, and those are some very experienced and talented designers.

As much as I would love to be capable of creating maps, I don’t think I am anywhere near even thinking of it. 🙁

[patrick_wd]

#9479

This idea has been discussed on IRC a bit as well, and it sounds great to me. I agree that a full megawad is overambitious by far, but a smaller doom 1 style single mini-episode is more viable.

I used to do some mapping a long, long time ago, and the tools and tech have come a long way since then. I’m definitely down to attempt to make a map for this.

My personal favorite style of map are the episode 1 style techbases, so I’ll probably do one of those. If there are more volunteers with different preferred styles we could probably arrange them into a loose arc.

[Wesbat]

#9482

Sign me up 🙂

I love me a good tech base.

I agree about a smaller map set. What time-frame did everyone have in mind? In time for the episode release?

It can still be a success even if it’s a work in progress when the episode airs, plus the added stress of a deadline is not always fun.

Of course you don’t want to get stuck in a never-ending cycle either. I will post some tips later to help inform us on avoiding this 🙂

[TigerQuoll]

#9483

If this goes ahead you could pencil me in. I haven’t done much Doom mapping, but many moons ago I used to make a lot of Duke3D levels, and I’m sure those skills would transfer pretty easily.

[patrick_wd]

#9484

The Build engine used by Duke 3D is way more complex and janky than Doom. If you have experience wrangling that, Doom should be no problem at all.

[Wesbat]

#9486

Some tips to save time mapping, these are editor agnostic and nothing here is absolute. Take what you will.

The basic steps of building a level:

1) Create the foundation: rooms, locations, and the connections between them.
2) Do a few test runs, adjusting rooms as needed.
3) Populate with monsters and items.
4) Do a few more test runs, balancing as needed.
5) Add flourish, detailing the aesthetics.

* It’s easy to change or reshape rooms, but it gets more time-consuming the more details you have to deal with (lines and vertices). Save time by leaving the fine details for last, allowing you to make rapid changes while the structure of your level is coming together. Also if you start detailing before the foundation has settled, it becomes too easy to lose momentum: your level feels unfinished (there is no exit?) despite all the time you spent making it look good.

Approach: Start with “broad strokes” and create rooms and locations first, optionally apply wall and floor textures where they act as visual reminders of a room’s purpose. Structures that have an effect on gameplay (stairs, lifts, keyed doors, nukage pits) all fall under broad strokes.

* Balance to make sure there is enough ammo and health for the player, and that monsters do not overpower the player. Maps are usually designed for “pistol start”: players who die and restart the level, players who record demos or do speed runs. Balancing also involves setting the easy/medium/hard flags on monsters so accommodate the difficulty level the player has chosen.

Approach: Place the initial monsters for what you consider the medium difficulty level. Play it a few times. How many times did you die before reaching the exit? Do you exit with 100% health every time and a fully stocked backpack? Add/remove monsters & items so you exit with barely enough ammo, and you picked up at least half the health bonuses.

Catering for the easy skill: When you are happy with the medium monster difficulty, select every second or third monster and remove the “easy” flag, this will give less monsters on the easy skill.

Catering for the hard skill: add one extra monster for every 3 medium monsters, setting only the “hard” flag for this new monster.

Balancing is by far the trickiest, I would be happy to assist with this, I’ve done a lot of it 🙂

[dr_st]

#9491

Balancing for hard skill, approach #2 – replace a bunch of Hell Knights with a Spiderdemon! 😛