Do you have any mapping gimmick trademark?

[Sonikkumania]

Do you have any habit or gimmick that you commit always / often when you map?

May it be particular use of textures, linedef action design or monster placement.

Anything you find yourself doing all the time basically.

 

Myself, I like to include all 3 hellish faces (Gargoyle, Lion and Satur) on decorations. I've always liked their Gothic design.

I'm also keen of blinking light sectors. Obivously I try to design them in less distracting and more ambient way. They're cool.

Sometimes I like to use a lowering floor as a doorway, especially on hell or other surreal themed maps.

 

[Thelokk]

My maps are entirely made up of the same gimmicks over and over.

 

- platforming all over the place.

- 9/10th of the enemies crammed into the final room.

- every single corner has to have a trim.

- BFG is a figment of your imagination. You wish life was that easy, dontcha?

- if a pit is escapable and / or not damaging I haven't done my job right. 

- run n' gun is an illness, not a playstyle. Anything that isn't a slow burn and 'gets the player's blood pumping' is anathema.

 

Edited October 5, 2022 by Thelokk

[yakfak]

opening the editor and saying "This time I'm going to make something irredeemably ugly" then spending hours on light gradients and microtexture alignment

also the gameplay will always be about either chainsawing or berserk punching imps and revenants, i found my lane

 

oh! something I often do is have an early room turn into a giant staircase later on with lots of outside map machinery and control sector stuff

Edited October 5, 2022 by yakfak

[xScavengerWolfx]

My gimmick is basic: i just use the kiss factor in my maps. In case you want to know kiss factor stands for keep it simple stupid.

 

Also for some weird reason i like to put cross' on the floor in my maps, Idk

Edited October 5, 2022 by xScavengerWolfx

[Sonikkumania]

Just now, xScavengerWolfx said:

My gimmick is basic: i just use the kiss factor in my maps. In case you want to know kiss factor stands for keep it simple stupid

So I guess my maps are AIDS.

 

Attempting it Dead Simple.

 

5/5 humour :D

[Stupid Bunny]

I'm not sure what I could point to but I guess these are things I've done more often than average

• Abusing the donut sector action
• Using BROWNWEL as a switch
• Making opportunities to chainsaw through gobs of zombiemen like a combine harvester
• Releasing an archvile at the opposite end of the map to appear with his resurrected buddies when you least expect it (everybody loves this one)
• Making "serious" maps with the Wolf3D assets
• Spider Masterminds

Also I'm not sure making giant, confusing maps is a gimmick but I've definitely done it several times

Edited October 5, 2022 by Stupid Bunny

[Kinsie]

These things:

[Thelokk]

14 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

I'm not sure what I could point to but I guess these are things I've done more often than average

• Abusing the donut sector action
• Using BROWNWEL as a switch
• Making opportunities to chainsaw through mobs of zombiemen like a combine harvester
• Releasing an archvile at the opposite end of the map to appear with his resurrected buddies when you least expect it (everybody loves this one)
• Making "serious" maps with the Wolf3D assets
• Spider Masterminds

Also I'm not sure making giant, confusing maps is a gimmick but I've definitely done it several times

 

Unironically peak mapping, the last two especially. 

[TheHambourgeois]

is it a vanilla mapset? if so you can bet your ass im fucking around with PLAYPAL

[thiccyosh]

Adding too many details per blockmap that nobody will ever notice. Also the reason why I only ever released very few maps lol.

[Fernito]

I use a lot of non-orthogonal geometry in my maps. I've developed some kind of allergy to right angles over the years, so I avoid them as much as possible.

[pcorf]

My recent gimmicks.

- Linear progression but maximize interconnection and minimize backtracking.

- Run and gun.

- Ambushes.

- Lots of Secrets.

- Use ROCKRED1, ROCKRED2, ROCKRED3 to vary the animation, not just ROCKRED1. Same with other animated textures (BFALL1,2,3,4, SFALL1,2,3,4, etc).

My past gimmicks.

- Symmetry.

- Backtracking.

- Unmarked Secrets.

- Extreme linearity.

Edited October 5, 2022 by pcorf

[azerty]

@Clippy has his famous paper clip in every single one of his maps.

[Xyzzу]

Edited October 5, 2022 by Xyzzy01

[Sonikkumania]

2 minutes ago, Xyzzy01 said:

Meaning, you have that trademark tag on every level you've made?

[Jayextee]

- Plutonia exit teleporters

I probably have some other gimmicks, I haven't really thought about it much.

[whybmonotacrab]

At some point in all my maps I will probably force you to use the rocket launcher in a cramped environment. I don't know why, but I love that shit.

Also fights on elevators.

[spineapple tea]

My MAP25 for Pandora and Toxic Shock both have a hidden 8-bit Mario sprite. There'd probably be more if I was more active with mapping. There's also this gimmick I do in almost every map where the first enemy you see is almost always a pinky idling over a ripped up player corpse. Pretty sure I first saw that visual in Requiem but I can't be sure.

[Xyzzу]

6 minutes ago, Sonikkumania said:

Meaning, you have that trademark tag on every level you've made?

Sometimes, but not a always.

https://mobile.twitter.com/SirDabadee/status/1196669893837492225

[Redead-ITA]

It depends on the situation:

I'm very much into tech base than demonic castles and the likes, mostly because i really like technology part of it, not to say that i won't attempt trying them.

 

As my title would imply i would use and abuse Redwall1 mostly because it was of the color red above all else, but it's usually a doom 1 texture exclusive sadly. 

one of my most common tropes in my mapping i seem to maintain are layouts that are always interconnected to the start of a level.

one trope in particular that i kept when i participated the Joy Of mapping series (and by extension also Isolation speed mapping project), was adding myself in the my level, whether i was a decoration or in the map geometry (as the later entries didn't allow custom decorations)

[antares031]

Gonna quote one of my old posts:

 

- Blue & gold textures
- Structural pillars & beams
- Banners on the ceiling

- Custom dehacked monsters

- MIDI soundtrack, composed by either Tristan Clark or Psychedelic Eyeball
- 3-4-5 pythagorean triangles in the layout
- Random Doomcute™ decorations
- Additional blue & gold textures and more banners on the ceiling

- Animated walls, made out of 1-pixel-wide scrollers

- Automap cleaning, ceiling-height-changing linedefs indicate either doors, switches, or important places

[Kinetic]

- silhouetted monsters against FIREWALA or FIRELAVA backdrops

- bunch of light gradients

[Jacek Bourne]

Extreme Detail. Whenever I make a map without messing around. Other than that, usually tyson combat puzzles and increasing complexity.

[ViolentBeetle]

A hole in the ceiling with a tall structure going through it. There isn't much you can do with sky hack, but except this. Also brighter lighting behind the windows.

Edited October 5, 2022 by ViolentBeetle

[Xyzzу]

4 minutes ago, ViolentBeetle said:

A hole in the ceiling with a tall structure going through it.

 

Ohhh, my~

[Xaser]

Circles, towers, and skyfloors. 'Nuff said.

 

I also remember someone saying my layouts tend to "look like crop circles" from above, and yep, that's a thing:

 

[Horus]

17 minutes ago, Xaser said:

Circles, towers, and skyfloors. 'Nuff said.

And unreachable BFGs :P

[Roofi]

Sector trees

[Egg Boy]

Random doomcute among more abstract architecture. This only became a thing when making Pagodia, but its really fun.

[CapersOnSalad]

I've found that I like to give the illusion of cruelty on my maps. I'll have a variety of traps and stuff that are absolutely overkill if you fuck up, but the solutions to them are always very easy and, if not, the payout is huge. 

 

For singleplayer, I don't really like traps that softlock the player (inescapable pits mainly). I think they should always have a way out. That increases the horror of it in my opinion. The walls are closing in, but there's hope at the end of the tunnel. Can you get there?

Edited October 5, 2022 by CapersOnSalad