Doom mapping is basically it's own weird artform that people have been refining for nearly 30 years. Unlike a modern AAA game it's typical for a single person to make a Doom map and so people can develop very unique and identifiable styles that come through in their maps. If you're an old Doom-fan and never got around the checking out the scene, Cacoward winners are a great place to find some highlights.
It's incredible how it sucks people in. The skill floor to expressing yourself is _damn low_; if you can draw 2D polygons, then you can make a Doom map with DoomBuilder[0]. But the skill ceiling is high. And the ease of creation allows for equal ease in iteration. And the source ports add loads of neat little features to add even more capacity for variety.
So you start by throwing together some boxes; and before you know it you've spent 11 years building a monster of a map in your spare time[1].
The incredibly low skill floor is definitely a big part of the scene's success.
I know a number of veteran professional level designers are kinda worried about the field. So many of them got their starts playing around with the level creation stuff that frequently came with PC games. It got them interested and allowed them to walk before they could run. So they're a bit afraid a new generation might be starting from less than they had. There's some hope that maybe Minecraft and Roblox will be a younger generation's starting point.
Game development is the most accessible it's been in many decades, but level design specifically is perhaps less accessible than it was circa 2000.
Yep, as a fellow game developer (programmer) I had similar concerns... Until recently.
Unity had the issue of the high skill floor of creating meshes for scenes until recently. You can now build reasonable looking unity scenes using a process akin to Hammer and QERadiant; albeit still inferior to those, IMHO.
There's also the resurgence of interest in crunchy arcade shooters, using classic engines no less, which is drawing attention to tools like DoomBuilder and TrenchBroom.
Annnd VR tools are making complex mesh building a lot more accessible by making it a lot more intuitive.
There's definitely been improvements in level editors for existing engines. Hell, if you want to use those old editors, there are even plugins like HammUEr, to use Hammer with Unreal 4 and Qodot to use editors like TrenchBroom with Godot.
But I will say there was something particularly special about level editors coming with the greatest games of the day back in the 90s and early 2000s. Not only was this extremely accessible as it meant you could just learn level design, and not the rest of game development, but it meant you got to learn level design for your favourite games, something particularly enticing to young people. You also got a bit of a built-in audience.
The low quality typically consists of ugly appearance and ridiculous or defective architecture, which rarely impact the fun of shooting monsters too seriously: even mediocre and uninspired careless placement of monsters in boring environments results in decent combat action.
I don't see it. Take a look at Mario Maker (and more recently Mario Maker 2). There's a vibrant scene there of creators who've started with "What if the first level of SMB but one off-screen Thwomp? Is that funny?" (Yes) and ended up making one screen puzzles, decent Kaizo (in the sense of levels which require high skill to complete, obviously all of Mario Maker is Kaizo in the other sense) even some of the weird troll sub-categories, like people who all they do is make anti†, without even a "real" course for you to need it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NSDxlgMRZQ
†A "softlock" is when it's possible to get into a situation where the player can't win but they also can't die and start over, so they must either restart the game or wait for some in-game timer to count down to zero. In normal course design you should prevent this, if necessary with an "anti-softlock" where Mario assuredly dies once frustrated in this way, e.g. you miss an important jump, and Mario just falls to his death, rather than being stuck in a deep pit from which he cannot escape. But in troll design you make dying in this circumstance possible but extremely difficult, so that the player's skill in tested not only in winning, but also just in dying. This art is called an anti-softlock or most often "anti" for short and is a crucial part of "troll Mario".
That's not even on a general purpose computer, a Switch is something you might have purchased or been gifted solely to play video games and now you're a level designer, able to show off your aesthetics, pacing, mechanics and so on.
(Java) Minecraft is way beyond that because it's not even just about level design, it goes way beyond even a Doom TC. People change the physics rules, how graphics are rendered, not to mention radically changing the gameplay. I basically only play the ascend-to-godhood type packs, and even among those there's so much variety between something tightly themed like Compact Claustrophobia or Star Factory, and big sprawling do-what-you like packs such as Stoneblock, or Project Ozone. But now you're a video game programmer (albeit in Java) not even just a level designer.
Super Mario Maker 2 is a good example of accessible level creation, but for other players the levels themselves are black boxes. Yes, it's easy to create and upload levels, but downloading and viewing other people's levels in the level editor is simply not allowed on a standard Switch. This is a problem since levels in general are not WYSIWYG: they use e.g. off-screen mechanisms, hidden blocks, and overlapping entities.
It took over two years before 3rd-party software could break Nintendo's DRM and give players the privilege of seeing how someone else's level works:
I can kinda see why Nintendo did this - rip off levels were a problem in Mario Maker, much harder to do that if you can't copy the level. Notice how many poor quality MM2 levels are the built-in demo levels (which you can freely start from) with a minor tweak? That would have happened to everything.
But you're right that it's frustrating if you're starting out. Many Troll makers provide a "behind the scenes" version where you can inspect how the contraptions work e.g. adding a vine you can climb to see mechanisms "above" the level, or making something transparent or whatever.
I think trolls are the category where off-screen mechanisms are most important. In a puzzle level they're mostly an unnecessary confusion (where did that key come from? Well, off screen a Thwomp hit an ON/OFF switch and...) and in Kaizo who has time to look at everything on the screen, let alone think about things that aren't on the screen.
Of course once you're actually "Into" it there are private discords and so on for discussing stuff where people upload video, provide codes for their "Uno mas" demos (ie very short courses that show off a single new idea) and explain insights into the underlying mechanisms. I never got that deeply into MM2 but it's clear that people writing trolls for Carl or Geek are co-operating.
It wasn't always so easy. Doing maps in the mid 90s relied on very limited tools and ones imagination. Build actually helped push things forward a lot. Glad to see modern Doom tooling has risen to the occasion.
Yep. I made maps regularly between 95 and about 2001. Then I went and made a map in 2006, and the difference was night and day. Moving from the 1995 workflow of DOS editors like WADED[0] and DCK[1] to Doom Builder was an incredible experience. My previous workflow had been: make as much of the map as I could (with just the top-down sector view; no previews other than seeing what the textures and flats looked like!), exit out of the editor, run a node builder like BSP or WARM, then start up Doom to see what my level actually looked like. With Doom Builder, all of the sudden I could essentially build the entire map in the editor and only actually start up Doom when I needed to test it.
It really gave me an appreciation for how much of a difference tooling and infrastructure, specifically fast feedback cycles, can make in a final product. Even if you don't see the difference in the development pipeline as a player, you can definitely see the difference in Memento Mori[2] and Sunlust[3].
As a kid making Doom maps in late '90s, the worst part for me was that it was common for the editor to crash, especially during the node building step, often taking all my progress with it.
Is there a good place to get started? I've played through Doom 1 and 2, TNT and Sigil. Started Plutonia too but didn't enjoy the endless chaingunner/revenant cheese. I don't like slaughter maps either.
The Cacoward levels are so good that SoBad on YouTube is playing _the runners-up_ and still encountering awesome levels like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drKn_EzQxg0, with that super cool concept starting after 1:27 (but don't skip to there).
Doom is such a great learning tool. If you have any interest in DOS games and programming, grab a copy of the Doom specs and start plugging away at the WAD file
You can use any language you want to work with the data, but C is probably the most straightforward. The first time you decode some sprite data, or a level map, you will have the strangest sense of joy as it appears on screen.
I used to play around with that stuff in the 90's with a copy of Turbo C and started to write a Mac level editor (very simple one at least) a few years back but haven't really worked on it since I had kids.
Doom/Build engine games/Quake/Unreal/Half-Life1&2 are the best games for modding. Engine is relatively simple, tons of tutorials and high quality examples, and a steady fan base.
The 90s through early 2000s were the best time for FPS modding and mapping, par none.
Half-Life led to some of my most favorite mods of all time. Natural Selection, Day of Defeat, Science and Industry, Action Half-Life. All complete bangers.
> The 90s through early 2000s were the best time for FPS modding and mapping, par none.
I used to be really into the Doom modding community and the ZDoom forums specifically 10-15 years ago, so it's really funny to me seeing a reference to this here now.
Back then I got invited into helping on a big custom map pack project and did a lot of level scripting for it. Nearly failed a few high school classes because I was skipping homework to work on it, and I ended up quitting cold turkey before the end to focus on school. The project was great experience and I think of it as my first real software development experience programming something for actual users. (It was also what made me realize I absolutely needed to learn a version control system like Git. Never again am I doing any group work on that kind of project if actual version control isn't used!) I was excited to learn later that the project got finished and it was one of the 2010 Cacowards winners (Stronghold).
It definitely helped for getting into college, which helped me out a lot, though fittingly I did end up dropping out of college years into it because of more projects I picked up on my own which then helped get me a job.
I think a lot of homework is busywork, made under the idea that nothing a kid does already outside of school has educational value. It's a shame that some of the most educational experiences I had were in conflict with the system. But then again, maybe that is an unusual experience? I think there's a stereotype I don't want to fall into, of autodidacts who fail to realize something unusual happened with them and think that all that's necessary to put others onto their path is to merely remove the obstacle of school. I wonder if it's possible for schools to better encourage this kind of experience, of kids learning through fostering mildly-competitive scenes of projects like this.
I'm still not sure how SIGIL only got a 2019 runner up. A 5th Episode of the original DOOM, made by John Romero, which was completely awesome, kicked ass and had a soundtrack by Buckethead? I fail to see how any of the competitors could have matched it.
I bet John is actually happier that the game he helped create almost 30 years ago is still so popular and has such a vibrant community that he's not the top dog in level creation.
The standard of DOOM maps has gotten very high. SIGIL is fine, but compared to the current standard, the maps were pretty crappy tbh, in every respect, technical, encounters, design.
Afaik they only included it at all as an honour to Romero. If some randomer had submitted it, it would not have been mentioned.
I'm a hardcore Doom fan; have been since its release. I have it as one of the first installs on every device I have; even my Windows machines have a portable Doom configured and ready to go in their Onedrive folders.
SIGIL is probably one of the best _Doom_ experiences since "Doom the way id Did". Too many modern maps lean heavily on limit-removing ports, and other modern features, and lose the sine qua non that made Doom unique and special. They eschew the radically unreal lighting and abstract-but-familiar level design to push the engine towards realism, and consider hardness to be a factor of enemy quantity and not the complexity of the situation.
I'd rather be dying because I was sniped while low on health and fending off a lone imp than find myself circling an insufferably large swath of enemies, soaking them with BFG blasts.
Somehow I find those high-class wads to be tedious and frustrating. But I find slaughterwads to be a great way to clear my head and truly escape the normal world. They get your heart racing. No time to stop for a breath. If you even turn around, you'll be dead. They're all I play on Doom. Some of my favorites are Dholes and Royale Arena - Cannonball which have beautiful architecture and some puzzle elements but still swarms of monsters. Working through Oreo Cake Massacre at the moment which is more crude.
This is often the case with games with an active mod community - modders are often willing to spend way more time on polishing and perfecting things than the original designers were.
They should have given Romero Most promising newcomer.
Do you play a lot of modern Doom wads and thus have a good feel for the state of the art, or is there some other basis for believing SIGIL would be unmatched?
I enjoy watching expert doom players grind crazy modern maps more than I enjoy playing doom. Went through a whole phase where I was watching various doom streamers on twitch, or mappers who play and critique each others' maps. It's fun.
Finally installed it tonight. So far so good. Besides the lack of slopes it's a good mod: solid art, actual plot, levels that feel connected, good gunplay, and perfect lighting for that lantern.
That bring me memories! I was an avid Doom/Heretic/DukeNukem3D map builder, I'd spend an amazing amount of hours building huge maps while listening to Queen (some queen songs, "Made in Heaven" Album specifically, bring those memories immediately).
It was really tons of fun, glad to see there is a community still alive doing that.
