What were your very first mapping attempts like?

[JoJo_BadDoom]

Really cool to see the various ways people have started off! Quite inspiring, and some of those first maps look pretty cool!

For me, I've made a tree :)

 

[Cutman 999]

Uhum 

 

[Pistoolkip]

In 94-95, we had DEU, and I didn't understand half of it. No internet to find things either. I remember not understanding tags, for example. But I could make doors.

 

I remember trying to make a James Bond map. The player started on some cliffs and had to assault a base with a giant door, by going through some vents. 

[Chookum]

My first mapping efforts were in 2016 and run through GZDoom and I did that thing where because GZDoom automatically treats a 0 tag as local. Replaying them in a classic style port leads to ... much silliness. You can go play them, somehow they ended up in DUMP2 along with something that happened to be in the same folder but not something I wanted to submit.

 

Before getting back into taking mapping more seriously I spent 2020 nursing something just to work out UDMF and better mapping tools than GZDoom Builder, but I'm going to keep that one to myself for now.

[Astar]

My first attempt at making a map was of some kind of facility with a outdoor area that had lights with the wrong light distribution.

 

And also non-working elevators and (of course) unpegged doortracks

[The Cooker Of Goats]

SQUARE

then no ideas

delete.

[DMPhobos]

My first map, made sometime around 2003 i think. I literally just discovered this page here in doomworld, downloaded all of the editors i could, and after trying them out, the only map editor i could get to run was DeepSea (nearly every editor was DOS and i had no idea how to run them). I started by making simple edits on the IWAD maps and later on other people maps with deepsea. Eventually i dared to make an original map on my own based on a specific spaceship. I had no idea of what i was doing, i didn't understood the concept of sectors and lines at all, so i just used the square tool and placed a few squares in the map because i didn't knew you have to draw shapes to make sectors, and i deleted some lines when i wanted to join stuff. The end result is a map that barely works. Oh and this was made directly on doom2.wad, since i didn't knew how to make a map on a separate wad. To top things i had a few custom graphics so uhh... enjoy

 

Few screens

Spoiler

 

 

[MundyC]

I still have the first maps I ever made for GZDoom (and Doom in general), both of which are unreleased. There are two candidates you can consider: my first map ever and my first proper, finished, and "polished" map.

 

 

My first map ever is actually a (bad, 1994 map-tier) recreation of I.M. Meen's first level, and basically a test run of what would eventually become the MeenTC. It's called "Doomguy VS I.M. Meen", and would've involved our boy John Stalvern making his way through I.M. Meen's labyrinth to kill the now demon-spawning magician, with one level representing a labyrinth "zone". I had to use what was available online - note the temp ceiling and switch textures, and low-res floor tiles I took from I.M. Meen's automap - because I didn't want to make an account on Xentax just to get the I.M. Meen graphics ripper. I scrapped the project as I didn't like how it was turning out, but did return to the concept later and ended up remaking the entire game in GZDoom.

 

 

For my first proper level, look no further than "Cell Block 9" from The Adventures of Rin, my first Doom WAD that actually went somewhere. It would've involved a prisoner of unknown origin escaping from the body of a living mechanical god, and this was the first level. It's a somewhat linear level where you have to find three keys to escape, but it's much more competent than DVIMM - roughly equivalent to an early map from a late-90s vanilla megawad. Sadly, I also canned this project, though I'd carry ideas from it over to my future works.

 

For example, I used the general layout (and the cell the player starts in) as a base for another prison map, in an indefinitely-delayed project of mine. Look to the left side, and you'll see a reimagining of the central courtyard, high-security to the west, cells to the north, and "reception area" to the east:

 

 

I think I might have improved my mapping skills??

[Xyzzу]

This thread has motivated me to compile a zip containing over 50 files consisting of:

• My first mapping attempt from July 2015 (given what my first released map is, it's about as unimpressive as you'd think)
• several unplayable map fragments and prefabs (with unbuilt nodes anyway)
• a few pokes at Doom 64 mapping with varying degrees of commitment circa 2016 (and then never again)
• numerous Confinement 256 scraps for some reason (and maps for other abandoned projects)
• some actually finished maps that were just never posted anywhere beyond Discord or my harddrive

Go nuts ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited January 19 by Χyzzy

[PurplDanial]

mine was an ugly triangle filled with every enemy in the game one pillar and john romero's head

also the name i gave was too embarrassing to say out here in the threads so message me and sign the "Cringe waiver" To agree for me to read the name of it out loud 

[Kinetic]

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Like every good mapper, I started out as a 14 yr old with a vision of making a whole megawad based off of all the cool things he played within the last couple of months. The screens are in chronological order until the final ones which are a little more ambiguous, but quite clearly I began to devolve from a normal techbase enjoyer (oceanbase enjoyer at that) into a common slaughter mapper who is obsessed with dark metals/rocks + color highlights. After a while I realized my maps and computer just weren't built for gzdoom and I didn't use gzdoom's features extensively anyways outside of 3D floors and dynamic lights (and DECORATE monsters). I really liked the boom maps I played, and you can guess which ones those were based on the later screens, so after a while I thought it just made more sense to go from gz in hexen format to just boom mapping. Really the first screens are first attempts at making a classic all-timer megawad's beginning episode(s), and the later screens are first attempts at making combat puzzles, slaughtermapping, and trying out the aforementioned aesthetic. I think I had logged 9 maps or so until I ditched the megawad entirely. There's some good ideas in there, particularly in the later screens some ideas there are still somewhat compatible with how I map these days, so maybe I'll find ways to recycle them for future maps.

 

I would like to say I still have the same ambition as I did back then, I just am a way better mapper now and have found my taste and niche. I've gone from trying to make realistic settings to more abstract settings with artificial ways of making areas look good (usually by spamming light gradients where the lighting doesn't actually make sense lol). Major L for me though for spending hundreds and hundreds of hours fiddling with these maps and DECORATE for over 2 years (2019-2021) just for them to never see a release and only surface through random screens I've sent over the years, culminating in a few paragraphs describing it briefly in 2024.

 

And yeah the rubik's cube looking map screens was a map I made where I had the genius idea to combine solving a rubik's cube with slaughter gameplay with silent teleporters with 10s of thousands of lines on screen at once with hundreds of monsters on a crappy laptop in gz. I learned to solve a rubiks cube just to make that map, and in the map you do actually solve a rubiks cube and the squares change colors and everything for each step with an earthquake shake for "immersive purposes". I also made a monster that had a railgun with a laser sight/tracer thing so you would see a laser tracking you before you got hit with the railgun..I was cooking with ideas in 2019-2021.

 

Now I make maps like this:

 

Spoiler

 

[ptrdoom]

You should release them Kinetic, every mapper in this thread , has pretty much made something that is unique, and as long as it is playable why not release them?

Edited January 19 by ptrdoom

[Walter confetti]

A Doom 2 map made with DEU and DCK back in... 1997 or something. One rectangular room with BIGDOOR3 plastered all around and a abstract room with green slime falls all around and maybe... a inverted cross sector made of lava? No doors or anything, to escape the BIGDOOR3 room where player spawn was placed you had to noclip it. The slime room had a cyberdemon, but i am not sure. Also there's a map called HANGARS for Doom, is just 4 rooms with different themes with a corridor joining them, i had it in one of my CDs, the Doom 2 one was vanished.

[ChopBlock223]

Shit.

[Maribo]

You can play both of them in the first D5DA.

Spoiler

 

Features include:
- Lines that should have been monster-blocking instead of impassable (I did not understand the difference).

- Inconsistent telefrag setup.

[Nefelibeta]

UnholySwords_1.wad

First ever (playable) map! This will make a good 90s map... I think.

There's also a huge ass unreachable area that take up 40% space of the map, as some sort of background. (Seen in the first screenshot)

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NightOps.wad Map01 - Afterrain

low budget grove copycat. Second map ever made.

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NightOps.wad Map02 - Caverns of Nirvana

Made this after playing abandon.wad :)

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pimpact.wad Map01 Reported

The last of my "not releasing anything because idk how to do it" era. Was planned to be a minisode but I forgot how it was supposed to be like. The only thing tying these maps together is a half-baked texture pack.

The map title is a reference to 50monsters Map01.

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pimpact.wad Map07 Deadly Complex

Another 50monster tribute. One of the better-looking ones. :p

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pimpact.wad Map11 Archviles, Say Your Prayers

First attempt at voodoo lighting. Texturing inspired by flotsam.wad Map01

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pimpact.wad Map?? Room Missing Shapes

Don't remember much about this.

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[Pegleg]

I think it was late 1994 (although it could have been early 1995, I don't remember). I started mapping making Doom 1 maps with a combination of DEU and DCK. I say that because, initially, my process involved placing vertices in DEU and doing textures and thing placement in DCK. I think I did that because I came across DCK first, but found it difficult to draw in for some reason. I ended up biting the bullet and switching to DCK full-time (as far as I know, it was the first editor to have an auto-align feature, too) until DCK went from being freeware to crippled shareware, so I switched to DEU.

 

I think I tried to make a map for Doom 2 once, but the editor didn't support Doom 2 or something like that. I remember copy-pasting Entryway into the editor and all the lines were there, but no sectors. So I went back to Doom 1. I had planned on making a full megawad entitled "Battle for the Sands of Blood." I had starting making a few of the maps, but they somehow became corrupted and I couldn't open them, so I just scrapped them.

 

But those weren't my first actual mapping attempts. The first attempts that I remember involved taking E1M4 and playing around with it, deleting parts, and messing around with the area that has the blue key room in the middle (the one with the 4 doors that open and close). When I tried to make an "original" map, I didn't understand how void space or doors worked. The walls were all double-sided linedefs that were marked impassable. They had a mid-texture on them so they looked like a wall. "Doors" were just sections of the "walls" with a door texture as the mid-texture so you could tell they were doors. And they were not flagged as impassable, so you could walk through them.

 

I never finished a map. I ended up making a map for the E3M7 slot, which I poked around with over the years from 1997-2000. I don't remember much about it, except that it was GSTONE, several long corridors, and a large room with a baphomet head teleporter in the middle. Stairs led down into room, but none of the monsters in it were set to ambush, so they would all just clump up at the base of the steps and you could shoot them from the top of the stairs. The teleporter led to the ending area, which was a lake of lava where you had to climb a set of steps that collapsed as you climbed them to reach a lava pool that would take you to E3M8. I made a 90 degree bend to the steps, just to make it more difficult. You had one shot to get it right, because there was no way to get to the top without the steps and no way to raise them once they collapsed, either. The map was basically done, but I never did anything with it.

 

I stepped away from Doom in 2001 and forgot about these maps. I didn't think about them until I came back to Doom in 2016. In 2017, I asked my aunt about the computer (my parents gave it to her sometime in the early 2000's), but she said it didn't work anymore and wouldn't even turn on. So, any of those early maps that were on there are, as far as I know, lost to history.

[eater29]

picked up UDB somewhere in late 2022 (while I was halfway through sunlust) and had a cool idea for some cramped rocket launcher fight. I went as far as drawing a rectangle and a small cubby for a secret bfg, couldn't find out how to make a door and gave up.
 

Spoiler

A couple weeks later I tried remaking the level with a higher level of detail, but I couldn't get the opening hallway to look any good and then lost steam. I also made some techbase map thing around november of that year but ran into the same "detailing block" problem of the previous map. At least that one has found a new home in a community project.
 

Spoiler

Having actually finished playing sunlust in december 2022, I felt I had a better sense of making a map look good and tried to make a small set of maps using only black and white textures which I threw together on GIMP. I felt quite happy with how they looked, but they still played terribly and I eventually lost motivation to continue them (I must have also not known about all the tools what would have made building the maps easier). RIP 11/12/2022 - 13/3/2023.
 

Spoiler

If anyone wants to mess with these textures, be my guest: monochrometex.zip

[ptrdoom]

8 hours ago, eater29 said:

picked up UDB somewhere in late 2022 (while I was halfway through sunlust) and had a cool idea for some cramped rocket launcher fight. I went as far as drawing a rectangle and a small cubby for a secret bfg, couldn't find out how to make a door and gave up.
 

  Reveal hidden contents

A couple weeks later I tried remaking the level with a higher level of detail, but I couldn't get the opening hallway to look any good and then lost steam. I also made some techbase map thing around november of that year but ran into the same "detailing block" problem of the previous map. At least that one has found a new home in a community project.
 

  Reveal hidden contents

Having actually finished playing sunlust in december 2022, I felt I had a better sense of making a map look good and tried to make a small set of maps using only black and white textures which I threw together on GIMP. I felt quite happy with how they looked, but they still played terribly and I eventually lost motivation to continue them (I must have also not known about all the tools what would have made building the maps easier). RIP 11/12/2022 - 13/3/2023.
 

  Reveal hidden contents

If anyone wants to mess with these textures, be my guest: monochrometex.zip

I tried it to open with ultimate doom builder but I can't.

[eater29]

8 minutes ago, ptrdoom said:

I tried it to open with ultimate doom builder but I can't.

The wad is all textures, no levels. who knows if I could revisit those in the far future :)

[ptrdoom]

Ahhh ok, I thought it was a map and I was curious to look it up in the editor, thank you for the answer!

[NoOne]

This is my first map of Guns iwad, circa '97 with DEU

 

[Desfar]

I have never managed to finish a wad level. I always over reach and drop the spinning plates.

[URROVA]

The first map i made now is lost media, the second i made is this: https://urrova.itch.io/nukemap

A deathmatch map with ACS stuff

[kalensar]

Mine were atrocious. I have zero ability to draw in paint, paper, map builders or MS-Paint. Best I can do is fix already existing maps to make them work how I want or make them work as is, but building them is just not my cup of tea. The code aspect of getting things to work is where my best efforts end up working. Its weird having mapper knowledge on getting triggers, lines, and spawns to work properly, but having the complete inability to use a paintbrush properly. 

[ObserverOfTime]

I made a boxing ring. I don't know why, I just thought it would be cool. Then I figured out how to teleport in monsters when the player punched a switch, you know, to square up and slug it out with a monster of your choice. The gimmick was that you couldn't press use anything and had to punch it instead, you know, because of the boxing arena theme, lol. There was a switch and teleporter closet for everything from former human to cyber demon you could summon, fight yourself, or make them fight each other. There was even a decal from Mike Tyson's Punch-Out on a poster hanging on the wall, I was especially proud that I had gotten a custom texture to work (but replaced something in the iwad in the process, which had hilarious side effect of Mike showing up *everywhere*).

 

It had no real purpose or progression to speak of. The idea was to make an exit available after the player killed a certain numbers of monsters, but I never figured that part out and gave up. Come to think of it, I could probably do it these days with all those fancy UDMF features I wished for when I first dabbled my toes into mapping. It would still have no real purpose or progression, but let's be real, who doesn't love endlessly punching demons right in the kisser?

 

Gonna download ultimate doom builder and give it a go now, how hard can it possibly be haha.

 

Edit: Okay, it's harder than I anticipated lmao. Going off of decades old memories, it might have looked a little something like this:

 

Punch a switch and up to 3 monsters of your choice spawn in the corners of the ring, take your place in one of the corners and punch the air to commence the fighting! The ones on the right are for stimpacks, rocket projectiles (to clear the arena), arch-viles and cyberdemons respectively. Like I said, utterly pointless and looking appropriately amateurish. Even the hideous custom textures for the switches are on-brand to what I did back then (and I still don't know how to animate them). At least when building in UDMF format I don't have to deal with teleporter closets and can have "true" infinite monsters at the activation of a linedef, so there's that I guess. I'm not sure why I even recreated this but I have to say that mapping and wad editing tools have come a looooong way over the years. This was like two hours of work, I remember being occupied for weeks with my first attempt. Maybe the tools have gotten better, maybe my brain has finally wrapped itself around how mapping in doom "works", who knows.

Edited February 9 by ObserverOfTime : More info and a screenshot added