your bad mapping habits

exactly what it says in the title

i have a lot ^{(ok this thread's more like a confession)}

- i'm too used to making mario levels so unless i'm really focusing i'll just make maps extremely linear with 0 amounts of revisiting areas

- i make no optional areas because i don't want anyone to skip anything i spent time on (terrible mindset probably)

- i keep making maps that i can't beat or that i find extremely annoying to play because im like "ok someone skilled will probably have fun playing this"

- ive seen a bunch of tutorials where they mention the horror of "overdetailing" so i will refuse to add anything that has too many linedefs in fear of it making the map "overdetailed"

I think my worst mapping habit is that I still make 'em.

Oh, that and circular stairways around open rooms.

33 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

I think my worst mapping habit is that I still make 'em.

Oh, that and circular stairways around open rooms.

i also have the first one yeah

Making large areas with nothing in them, and underdetailing.

2 minutes ago, realjohnmadden said:

Making large areas with nothing in them, and underdetailing.

same

I still fall into the trap of drawing rooms and connecting them with corridors or door-like openings more often than I'd like to.

I make maps that are all style and no substance. That is if I ever find the motivation to make em at all :P

I keep reverting to the same shape, a rectangle with the corners cut off diagonally. It works, but I sometimes think I overuse it.

i always put too many weapons that even hard areas become easy

Using shotgunners as default enemies and filling maps with them. Of course I try to replace as many as possible later on during the development. I like shotgunners because they're fun to mow down (unlike tougher imps), but they still pose quite a danger unlike zombiemen. I also think balancing the map around shotgunners is convenient, as, because they deal a lot of unavoidable damage, you're incentivized to put a lot of health on the map.

Its a matter of perspective, and many other people have said this works for them - building/detailing one area at a time. I'm trying to slowly instill a "get the raw layout mostly done first" mindset, been making a small map the last couple of days with this approach and its been going well. Dunno how well I will stick to it but the change in method feels good. Now I can spend forever messing with textures in the knowledge that they're going into an almost complete layout. Ideally I'd like to have a stash of greyboxed layouts I can choose from and repurpose for whatever means.

I'm terrible with ammo balance. I overcompensate when I have not enough and drown the player more often than not. Getting better with it though, but it's all throughout Headless Chicken.

7 minutes ago, Chookum said:

I'm terrible with ammo balance. I overcompensate when I have not enough and drown the player more often than not. Getting better with it though, but it's all throughout Headless Chicken.

i do the opposite, i'm like "okay there's 20 imps so i'm just going to place a single shell box"

42 minutes ago, Chookum said:

I'm terrible with ammo balance. I overcompensate when I have not enough and drown the player more often than not. Getting better with it though, but it's all throughout Headless Chicken.

This is the hardest thing for me, I'll design an encounter and be like "it's too frustrating", add some resources, and then be like "no wait it's totally trivial now" and I'll change it back and forth like 12 times after sending to someone to test because I'm expecting it to be either a complete joke or horrible and impossible.  

I also have a bad habit in my workflow of testing every time I change one thing.  Also of essentially procrastinating by detailing the hell out of some thing I've added instead of building out the next part of the map I know I need to just make happen.  Speedmapping has helped me with both of these but they're easy habits to fall back into if I'm not disciplined about it and they sure make the build times a lot longer.

Worst habit overall is probably making poor assumptions about how much the player will be clued in to what switches do, or where to go next.  It's a pain in the smaller maps I've been doing lately and I've achieved disaster this way with some of the giant maps I've done.  It's true sometimes as well even with secrets and telegraphing those, I'll put something in thinking "oh man it's too obvious I don't want to insult the player's intelligence or make it too boring" and then end up with something pointlessly arcane.

90 degree angles, so many 90 degree angles

A lot of the time I'll just go on autopilot and start drawing a bunch of random shapes with no coherency. I also overuse octagons. When I was starting out with Doom mapping, almost all my maps were just square rooms connected by doors and halls, but I've improved in that regard at least.

Also swearing by SLADE 3's map editor because I'm too lazy to figure out how to get UDB working under Linux

1 hour ago, The Final Event said:

90 degree angles, so many 90 degree angles

Profile pic checks out :p

Procrastinating every single layout I try to make.

true combo: extremely detailed first room with a lovingly crafted first encounter and fight -> well now what the fuck do i do

4 hours ago, stephyesterday said:

true combo: extremely detailed first room with a lovingly crafted first encounter and fight -> well now what the fuck do i do

for the longest time i literally just opened up doom builder, made a box and then went "well what the fuck do i do now"

as I'm working on things now: testing the map every time I draw like 3 new linedefs.

Detailing too early, I’m a bit more disciplined now so I do that less. Feels like a trade off sometimes though.

My ADHD style of mapping is a problem in of itself at times - starting a new room over here, placing monsters over there, detailing over here, difficulty balancing there, block out a room there, playtest this room on Easy, detail that room, place monsters over here and playtest that...

And this style of mapping often results in me doing what I call my mapper's block doodle:

Lack of time to complete nearly finished maps, while concurrently creating new projects that fall into the same cycle

Mapping.

14 hours ago, plums said:

as I'm working on things now: testing the map every time I draw like 3 new linedefs.

i either do this or just test it once and go "ok fuck it nothing crashes the game it's done"

My maps are most of the time rather symmetrical. I want to break away from that habit badly.

On 3/24/2024 at 4:46 PM, realjohnmadden said:

Making large areas with nothing in them, and underdetailing.

Born too late, you could've been a TeamTNT member.

being an amateur mapper, my maps still have little to no decoration - no burning barrels nor trees, no hanging paintings on the walls, etc. just endless rows of empty walls. but i'm learning to change that bit by bit. for instance, my last map had a few flags as decor :)

making rooms, detailing them to high hell then trying to fit little crumbs of gameplay into them because they're way too small to actually be the setpieces i wanted them to be

Not mapping.