What do you think are your mapping strengths and weaknesses?

[SOSU]

I lie to myself that i'm good at layouts, i tend to do the circular design thing people like and am better at smaller maps themed around settings from the past. 

Now i'm bad at techbases, using the Doom 2 bestiary and using large textures packs, those together with my interest in dark fantasy lead me to making mostly Heretic maps, i never know what enemies i should put in an area in Doom 2 but rarely feel like that in Heretic.

My detail is a bit basic but it gets the job done, not Sandy level but no GothicDM either, and my lighting is pretty basic.

I'd mostly just like to improve my detail a little and learn good Doom 2 bestiary usage.

What about you?

[Job]

Strength: starting a map

Weakness: finishing the map

[nrofl]

Strength: Good Ideas

Cons: Procrastination until I dont want to even follow through

[Omniarch]

Strengths: unconventional, good at hub areas and individual encounters, strong lighting.

 

Weaknesses: perfectionistic, bad at everything else besides hub areas and encounters, makes maps too dark.

[Mystic 256]

Strengths: Detail, Visual Elements, Texture usage/texture palletes, Room Shapes and Architecture, Lighting (sometimes), using the editors (UDB and Slade), basic scripting, know how to add resources to my wad, seemingly infinite ideas (i have massive lists of ideas), know how to use effects and use various source port features (3d floors, Boom Conveyor belts, ect), sometimes able to speedmap well on a rare really good day, knowledge of doom elements and tropes from playing 100s and 100s of wads in my life, Natural/Outside areas, Techbases, decentish at making custom sprites and textures

 

Weaknesses: Slow at deciding on things/unsure of my own choices, Encounters and Traps, figuring out what the Layout and Goals/Goal Progression/Flow should be like, getting over the starting hill, im not really good fixing mistakes and improvising (sometimes ill get stuck and unsure how to fix something and its often easier for me to start over than fix it), bad routine and sleep schedule, 100s of unfinished wads, i don't know how to compose my own midis yet, Balance and Placements

[Misty]

Strength: Making really nice natural landscapes with established themes and ideas.

Making good choices to match music with atmosphere.

 

 

Weakness: Making buildings or any place, which was built to resemble sort sort of "artificial" architecture, way too claustrophobic to walk and fight around way too often(but I'm learning to make areas bigger and nice to look).

Draining myself at point that I need take long breaks between doing something new. 

Being too critical at my mapping work. 

[Dranyan]

Strength : I think i'm good at detailng, setting up an atmosphere, and choosing suitable music

 

Weakness : I don't have an ability to make abstract complex architectures (like the ones in Ribbik's maps) despite the fact i really want to implement the style into my maps. Additionally, i'm protan colorblind, so i tend to mess the color mixture or something like that.

[Arbys550]

It's pretty hard for me to tell, I'd have to ask the people who tested my maps what they think, but this is my guess:

 

strength: texture usage/theme

 

weakness: overdetailing, layout, monster placement

[Doom-X-Machina]

My biggest weakness is playing someone else's WAD, seeing things that totally out-do anything I've created, becoming disheartened and wanting to just give up.

[Phobus]

I see myself as having one real strength in mapping, and that is experience. I've been playing Doom since it came out, I've been tinkering in editors for over twenty years and I've been releasing stuff online for almost fifteen years now (roughly a week to go!) This gives me confidence in my abilities and a pretty clear idea of what I want and how to achieve it.

 

However, my weaknesses are many:

• Impatience
  • I expect myself to be able to get things done quickly and lose interest with unfinished projects if they'll take time
• I'm still learning the restrictions of vanilla and limit-removing
  • The community keeps getting surprised with the stuff vanilla doesn't let you get away with, so that's not really on me, but even fairly common behavioural stuff still catches me out because I prefer ZDoom and it's Boom-styled behaviour handling (plus all of the other benefits)
  • I also, increasingly don't have much patience for dealing with these issues
• As a combination of the above two, bugs still sneak into my projects despite any pride I may have in my technical competence
• I don't bother with the advanced tools in GZDoomBuilder-bugfix (and probably won't when I make the jump to UDB)
  • If you watch Bridgeburner or insane gazebo, for example, putting maps together, you'll see they get a lot of advanced stuff done pretty quickly in GZDoom UDMF maps because they've learnt the tools and make heavy use of them
• I'm no kind of artist
  • Partially due to impatience, probably also just because I don't value the aesthetics too highly. Where custom assets might help, I often don't bother and texturing is mostly an "it'll do" thing
• I'm not a musician or MIDI guy
  • Relying on MIDIs made by other people means that my music choices are often driven more by what's available that sounds like what I want
  • As I'm not any kind of artist, and musicians are artists, I miss out on a lot of the finer points of what makes a MIDI choice strong
• I have too many projects on the go
  • Currently 6 WIP projects in my own little list
  • I also have longer term ambitions about moving away from community projects, vanilla and limit-removing to pursue an interest in advanced GZDoom stuff, but it's a slow process
• I'm poorly motivated
  • This makes finishing projects less likely and also makes half-arsing what I do finish more likely
  • This also makes me very unreliable for community project submissions, which is a factor in my moving away from them
• I'm a responsible adult
  • My responsibilities severely restrict my mapping and Dooming time
  • As an adult, I've got a lot of agency in what I do, which often gives me a wider choice of activity and makes Dooming less attractive when there's so many alternatives, leading too...
• I like playing games more than Dooming and mapping
  • The above two combine into this one, but I also have a huge games library of stuff I've bought and many, many freebies that I want to get through. These weigh on me every time I pick up another Doom project, or resume one of the many outstanding
• I often like the idea of having made something more than the effort of actually making it
  • Frankly, after making nearly 200 maps, it takes a lot to get me excited about making another one. Even once I'm started, I often know how it'll pan out and I'm not particularly interested in putting the time in when the above factors are in play

So yeah - a lot of that isn't in the detail of game play, balance, architecture or detailing, but it all detracts from anything I might achieve. Frankly, I think the maps I make are generally fine, usually technically competent and probably reasonably playable, but they don't stand out and rarely garner more than a passing interest. That makes the few actual fans of my work all the more precious, of course!

[MFG38]

Strengths: Good eye for aesthetics, know how to craft a good atmosphere, regularly experimenting with new gameplay concepts.

 

Weaknesses: "Room-oriented" thinking in bigger maps, layouts regularly lean towards linear, attaching myself to CPs on a whim and not managing to deliver when something else catches my interest.

Edited November 4, 2020 by MFG38

[DynamiteKaitorn]

My Strengths:

+ I say I'm good at making maps that are easy for most players to get into since I don't generally put people through unfair challenges.

+ I'm usually decent at giving out resources with a little extra on the side.

+ It's very rare my maps contain texture misalignments since I'm pretty annoying to myself to "CHECK. EVERY. TEXTURE." (Probably part of the reason why I'm such a slow mapper. XD).

 

My Weaknesses:

- I snap my linedefs to an 8x8 grid a little tooooo much to the point it's fairly obvious how some of my maps are laid out (sometimes I do wonder if I have ADD or something equivalent since I'm like this IRL >_>).

- I use certain mapping details a little too frequently (almost all of my switches indent into a wall/jut out, using an 8-wide texture to separate stairs from rooms, having enemies in a closet placed so they are mirrored on both sides of a trap despite them only coming from 1 side of a room).

- My map layout itself can be very formulaic like "Room-Hallway-Room"/"Room-Door-Room"; Rooms that almost never link back to the main part of the level, secrets being hidden behind slightly misaligned textures/mis-coloured textures.

- Being overly ambitious in my ideas for TMoD.

[ChopBlock223]

I don't work as fast as I should, and I detail my maps way too fucking much. It hasn't caused many problems yet, but there's some slimetrails in the level I'm most proud of that, though small, I really wish weren't there. It has also lead to some circumstantial slowdown when playing them in GzDoom, though it runs perfectly fine normally.

[ChopBlock223]

12 hours ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

almost all of my switches indent into a wall/jut out

This I think is a good practice 9 times out of 10, it makes switches more eye catching (particularly if you make the indent bright), and often it just looks better. I find myself hating to just slap a switch texture straight on a piece of flat wall.

[MattFright]

strength: good layouts and detailing come naturally to me

weakness: i can't settle for simple detailing

[Murdoch]

Strengths: Being smart enough to know I have far too little free time to attempt mapping and giving it a decent shot.

Weaknesses: Having far too little free time to attempt mapping and give it a decent shot.

[Solmyr]

strenghts: decent layouts, atmosphere and detailing. 

weaknesses: combat is not often on the same level as the strenghts mentioned avobe, taking forever to make a single map.

[mxrgan]

Strengths:
I personally feel I have a decent - good grip on the meat and potaters of the map (Gameplay) and I also manage to make thing slook good with out over detailing imo.

Weaknesses:

My layouts can be very linear, with room-hallway-room gameplay, but I still manage to make the player loop back through the hub area. I am trying to improve this by adding secrets that open up some newer areas, kind of like how e1m1 and e1m2 did it.

Edited November 5, 2020 by PSI Boredom Ω

[SiMpLeToNiUm]

Strengths:

 

Overall positivity and the ability to bounce back from periods of negativity, coupled with a desire to learn and try new things

• Up until very recently I've struggled on and off with severe mapper's block and overall feelings of extreme negativity towards my creativity, but as time has gone on and I've gotten more confident and experienced overall I have started to develop tips and tricks to help myself (and hopefully others) break out of these toxic cycles.
• The connections I have with people that are always willing to help out and act as sources of inspiration, knowledge and positivity and always push the envelope of what can be achieved in this engine. Seeing the ceiling constantly move up makes you wonder just what is possible and helps avoid stagnation.
• Ambition and a desire to see where it takes me - I see potential new opportunities, naive or not, beyond just doom mapping way somewhere out there on the horizon and my continued experience and immersion with this hobby and creativity in general makes that an exciting prospect and excellent motivator.
• Always trying to learn more about "mapping theory" and the creative process as a whole, leading me to challenge how I think and approach creativity. I fully believe this is what will ultimately lead me to becoming a better mapper and creator now and in the future.
• I like to think I share what I learn with others, and that helps boost my motivation as well.

Weaknesses:

 

Big ideas and a lack of experience to do them justice, leading to a lack of focus and ultimately some frustration

• My ambition can lead me to come up with what I call "big-brain ideas" that may not be immediately feasible and might lead me to a burnout if I try to stick with them too desperately. Sometimes I need to tell myself multiple times when an idea is worth pursuing or not or if it needs to be changed up.
• The "arrogance and hubris of youth". I know full well that a lot of the energy I can have at times approaches manic levels, but that's a double-edged sword and something I have to keep in check sometimes. It can help tremendously in some areas but lead to a lack of focus in others.
• Sometimes I focus more on this (mapping) than other things in life, but hey, ya gotta have hobbies ;)
• That aforementioned negativity and self-doubt will rear its ugly head every now and again, but the time I spend in that state finally seems to be getting shorter each time I start a new map

Edited November 5, 2020 by SiMpLeToNiUm

[Pokemanic33]

I like to think I have a fairly competent grasp on vanilla level design, but I don't have the dedication to make vanilla/Boom compatible maps

[HQDefault]

Strengths:

-Pretty good about making areas that feel like they go beyond the playspace.

-I can do atmosphere fairly well.

-I feel like I'm good about making open-ended levels that aren't hard to follow.

 

Weaknesses:

-I'm way too nice to the player. I try to over-accomodate but it winds up taking the challenge away.

-I sometimes design areas as form over function.

-I often forget (or am just too lazy) to setup traps.

-I crave attention when I post things. I get way too excited to see if someone has uploaded a video of my map, even if I know the odds are low.

Edited November 5, 2020 by HQDefault

[ViolentBeetle]

Strength:

- Coming up with gimmicks for my maps and also making looping maps

 

Weakness:

- Making a room that is bigger than 128x128 and not suffering a heart attack.

[MemeMind]

Strength: Interesting gimmick maps using gzdoom features.
Weakness: They are usually very small and under detailed.

[StalkerBlade]

Strengths: Lighting, composition, atmosphere and making at least a little effort to think outside the box, I guess.

 

weaknesses: Having a bunch of ideas that can't be translated into Doom very well, taking 1 hour to pick one single texture for a wall, taking too long to finish a map, and actually finishing a map in general.

[Roofi]

Strenght : 

 

boats , sector trees , 3d bridges 

 

weaknesses : laziness , procrastination , lack of confidence when starting a new map.

[Matias]

strengths : Creating layouts relativily quickly

 

weaknesses : sector lighting, using too many switches, actually finishing anything.

[DMPhobos]

Strengths
I feel i can make interconnected layouts that sometimes encourage incidental combat, i think i'm good at texturing and keeping it consistent and also think i'm good at making visuals that are simple, but look good and are memorable without excessive detailing

Weaknesses
I feel i'm bad a coming up with good and engaging gameplay, and that the setups i have in my maps sometimes are weak, cheesable or just boring and repetitive because of it

[Mr. LBN]

Weaknesses:

-Very slow to map regardless of if I have an outline.

 

-Repetitive texture choices (Nothing too bad).

 

-Unfair, dickish trap maker (I have a Plutonia style map trap mind with enemies that are literally overbuffed although to offset this your weapons are too), low empathy for the "average" player.

 

-Starting a layout/map.  The first few hours of creating the opening areas is the toughest parts of map making.

 

-You'll be able to tell if I've ever worked on a project by the consistent/boring method of approach I take in regards to mapping although I hope my first project I'm working on doesn't fall flat towards the end.

 

-I buffed the Chaingunner (Yeah, you read that right and it's not a slight buff at all...It's huge.).

 

Strengths:

-Enemy placement/usage (I can always find a way to make enemies annoying for you, although this may be seen as a weakness depending upon the perspective).

 

-deHACKED usage for enemies and weapons (I've managed to create a weapon entitled the LADT3000 which will damage and push enemies away from a slow moving BFG ball which is 100% vanilla compatible)  The deHACKED behavior for enemies stands out relatively well (You almost forget these enemies can work 100% sometimes Vanilla) and many of them have alt versions.

 

-I can take a basic/old layout and blow it up so to speak (See below).

 

 

 

Edited November 11, 2020 by Mr. LBN

[snapshot]

I think my biggest weakness is making interesting encounters that can't be cheesed so easily, I'm not super familiar with the game's intricacies, but I've never really tried making combat focused maps. Most of my maps are usually straight forward key or switch hunts. I'm not really looking for extremely hard or punishing gameplay when it comes to mapping, more so for the interesting themes, gimmicks, good flow and making nice looking areas. I still manage to keep them moderately challenging.

Edited November 12, 2020 by sluggard