Early maps you've made.

[elio_2.exe]

I was scrolling through some old stuff, and found some of my first wads that I never released, and I was pleasantly surprised! Of course I had to try and play through them (only to find out they're much more confusing than I remember). 

Progression was sooo obscure, angles were always 90 degrees and texturing was honestly better than I expected. Sure, it doesn't account for the million sewers I placed in the map below, but hey, at least they were optional.

Just checking these maps out made me reflect on my journey as a mapper, and how my style and philosophy changed (or didn't change). Honestly, some of the areas can even be reused. I simply got nostalgic looking at these maps and decided to share. That's all.

 

Oh god sewers

Spoiler

 

Look at all those archies

 

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That's a yellow door!

 

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Honestly, this isn't that bad

 

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Yeah, just felt like sharing old maps. Does anyone else have anything to share?

[PhantomFool765]

I've got all my old WAD's neatly placed in a folder named 'Abandoned' and I'll gladly show a bunch of highlights of the 3-4 year journey in DOOM mapping.

 

To start us off I think it's only right to start off with my first Map "One Fucking Nazi"

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

Talk about unsightly, This wasn't even just 2019/2020 me being edgy I just plastered random textures and they happened to be the swastika ones. I do still make reference to this map from time to time when I remember by having maps feature a secret with a lone Nazi in them.

 

After this we have my first attempt at an actual map and not literal garbage on a grid, a collab with an old mapping partner I don't map with nowadays. 

Spoiler

I was not aware of the John Romero mapping rules yet if you wondered. 

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Some things don't change, this door (which is right next to the exit door across the hallway), is a secret. My secret creation skills definitely have at least improved beyond such a disgrace to the very definition of secret. 

 

Next up we have my first ever Episode, The Temple which featured 8 Maps of absolute texture garbage and 25 second length maps.

 

Spoiler

Here is MAP05, My map layout skills were terrible and I loved the hallway way too much. The WAD did have a bit of scripting though which was pretty neat.

 

After that we begin my Dynamic Lights Era with The Ship which was intended to be a full 8 map WAD but died around like MAP04 because I couldn't think up how to make a Hell Map anymore.

 

Spoiler

Here is MAP01, It's clear I got more uniform with my rooms and whatnot but I was still radical with these hallway lengths.

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Hey, at least this room was kinda cool.

 

And for what I'd consider the end of my Early era was The Ship Remade, About a year after The Ship I chose to remake it, but as a one level really long level ordeal.

Spoiler

Hell of a big map with a lot of sections but I do thill have this long and curved hallway fetish type of shit going on. Theres still some cool ideas for setpeices in this map though.

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A metal bridge with a bunch of computers under it with an acid pit.

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And the BFG room was pretty cool too. Overall looking back I definitely have improved by a longshot at my map making skills and I'm glad to have finally this year taken it upon myself to improve as much as possible in my DOOM mapping abilities.  

[elio_2.exe]

Spoiler

14 hours ago, PhantomFool765 said:

I've got all my old WAD's neatly placed in a folder named 'Abandoned' and I'll gladly show a bunch of highlights of the 3-4 year journey in DOOM mapping.

 

To start us off I think it's only right to start off with my first Map "One Fucking Nazi"

 

  Reveal hidden contents

  Hide contents

Talk about unsightly, This wasn't even just 2019/2020 me being edgy I just plastered random textures and they happened to be the swastika ones. I do still make reference to this map from time to time when I remember by having maps feature a secret with a lone Nazi in them.

 

After this we have my first attempt at an actual map and not literal garbage on a grid, a collab with an old mapping partner I don't map with nowadays. 

  Reveal hidden contents

I was not aware of the John Romero mapping rules yet if you wondered. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Some things don't change, this door (which is right next to the exit door across the hallway), is a secret. My secret creation skills definitely have at least improved beyond such a disgrace to the very definition of secret. 

 

Next up we have my first ever Episode, The Temple which featured 8 Maps of absolute texture garbage and 25 second length maps.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Here is MAP05, My map layout skills were terrible and I loved the hallway way too much. The WAD did have a bit of scripting though which was pretty neat.

 

After that we begin my Dynamic Lights Era with The Ship which was intended to be a full 8 map WAD but died around like MAP04 because I couldn't think up how to make a Hell Map anymore.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Here is MAP01, It's clear I got more uniform with my rooms and whatnot but I was still radical with these hallway lengths.

  Reveal hidden contents

Hey, at least this room was kinda cool.

 

And for what I'd consider the end of my Early era was The Ship Remade, About a year after The Ship I chose to remake it, but as a one level really long level ordeal.

  Reveal hidden contents

Hell of a big map with a lot of sections but I do thill have this long and curved hallway fetish type of shit going on. Theres still some cool ideas for setpeices in this map though.

  Reveal hidden contents

A metal bridge with a bunch of computers under it with an acid pit.

  Reveal hidden contents

And the BFG room was pretty cool too. Overall looking back I definitely have improved by a longshot at my map making skills and I'm glad to have finally this year taken it upon myself to improve as much as possible in my DOOM mapping abilities.  

 

It's so cool seeing how much you can improve! Thank you for sharing!

[Kor]

I don't have a lot of my early work. My first few months (late 95/early 96) of making doom levels were a dismal failure, as I kept unknowingly doing things in DoomEd that the program didn't like, rendering the levels unplayable. Then when I got my hands on a newer version, I set out to replace episode 4 of Ultimate Doom. And I had all the levels in a single wad as I worked on it. And one day Doomed crashed while I was saving it. It screwed up the file completely and I had no backups. But I kept at it and created PSFDoom, replacing all four episodes. I released it in late 96 and regrettably had it deleted from the archives when I released a modified version of it called Vengeance. After PSFDoom was finished I got to work on Invasion and released that in late 96 as well. But later versions of those got uploaded and the original version was deleted from the archives. The earliest of my work that still exists can be seen among the levels of Episode Hell, which is still available for download on the archives. Some of its levels were done in the early days of my hobby.

 

I must say I regret having my earliest work deleted from the idgames database because I didn't keep the files on my hard drive either. But my first maps featured jagged walls and lots of marble texturing with wooden floors and ceilings. Also lots of big areas and high rooms. 

 

And your early work looks much better than my early work did.

Edited May 26, 2023 by Kor

[Murdoch]

On 5/25/2023 at 10:39 AM, elio_2.exe said:

Oh god sewers

DING

[Scorpinax]

This is an intriguing topic. One of the earliest maps I made that still survives today is Map 02 of Chokehold, Aimless Wanderings. I don't know exactly how old this map is but its gotta be at least 9 years old at this point.
Like most of my early maps its very small and jam packed with monsters. I jumped right into adding custom monsters so you'll see them in the map.
 

Spoiler

^ The main hallway is filled with pinkies and red pinkies that shoot bouncing shots, with an elevator up. 

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^ This area made me laugh because its literally just a hallway with doors filled with enemies. Hardly any detail and two cacos ambush you at the end.

 

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^ The Entire map. Its not bad for how little I knew about the editor, I think.

[Cinnamon]

5 hours ago, Murdoch said:

DING

 

Sewers can be good, Civvie. Come into the fold.

[Cinnamon]

I might re-create my first few maps from memory at some point, since it's rather few, but the projects themselves are lost to history as I dabbled in it some 15 years ago the first time. 

[thestarrover]

12 hours ago, Kor said:

I must say I regret having my earliest work deleted from the idgames database because I didn't keep the files on my hard drive either

Maybe you still have it but I found a file called PSFD_FIX.RAR. It Includes E3M4.wad, a fixed version of the PSFDOOM map. It is slightly different from the one included in Vengeance.It  is a little thing I know, but if you are interested I can upload it.

Edited May 26, 2023 by thestarrover

[Kor]

16 minutes ago, thestarrover said:

Maybe you still have it but I found a file called PSFD_FIX.RAR. It Includes E3M4.wad, a fixed version of the PSFDOOM map. It is slightly different from the one included in Vengeance.It  is a little thing I know, but if you are interested I can upload it.

Ah yes I had forgotten I did that. And yes I am interested in seeing it. I have forgotten so much of what PSFDoom looked like. Thanks.

[BedrockCastle]

This is one of my earliest maps. It's pathetically square and flat, and there's a ton of wasted space.

 

This is the starting area.

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Then there's this "tower".

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The yellow key lowers the ROCKRED square to reveal five Hell Knights, and a bunch of rockets.

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Finally, the yellow key switch lowers a wall which has a mob of Imps behind it. I somehow managed to make blowing up massive crowds of Imps boring in this map.

Spoiler

 

[thestarrover]

6 hours ago, Kor said:

Ah yes I had forgotten I did that. And yes I am interested in seeing it. I have forgotten so much of what PSFDoom looked like. Thanks.

PSFD_FIX.RAR

 

I hope you find your other old works!

 

 

[Kor]

24 minutes ago, thestarrover said:

PSFD_FIX.RAR

 

I hope you find your other old works!

 

 

Thanks. Where did you find this anyway? I never uploaded it in a rar file.

[Fernito]

My first Doom map (2012, Ultimate Doom) 

Spoiler

 

Bonus track: my first FPS map ever (1997, Duke3D):

Spoiler

 

[Lizardcommando]

I've got some embarrassingly bad maps. A few have been released while the majority of them have not seen the light of day.

 

This was the very first map I had completed using the Wadauthor tutorial that was included in its help guide. I don't think I have its original wad anymore, but I did have this map shoved into a shitty "megawad" i was making for my own private use many, many years ago as a secret map.

[thestarrover]

10 hours ago, Kor said:

Thanks. Where did you find this anyway? I never uploaded it in a rar file.

I found the file on a USB stick that I usually use to copy files from my old 2007 Mac that I still have at my parents' house. I still have a few levels for doom (and duke 3d) on that computer and occasionally make a copy.

[Insaneprophet]

3 hours ago, Fernito said:

My first Doom map (2012, Ultimate Doom) 

  Hide contents

Now that is something Id like to play 😜

 

 

[dmh094]

Back in my early days of mapping I made two episodes of a megawad called “Dark Fantasy” really primitive design and a lot of mistakes, but it’s still up on moddb 😂😂

 

https://www.moddb.com/games/doom/addons/dark-fantasy-final

 

https://www.moddb.com/games/doom/addons/dark-fantasy-ii-v10

[rita remton]

some of my early attempts at mapping :P

 

[Stupid Bunny]

A small sampler of my earliest surviving maps.  These three are a few of like 12 planned maps I had drawn out, 6 of which actually got made (the rest would've been just as questionable, one design was to my memory a flat maze literally titled "The Sewer")

 

 

Halls of the Clueless, the very first map I ever attempted.  Fitting I guess that my first map was a dumb gimmick.  Don't shoot or touch the monsters (or hunt secrets) and you can just run to the exit unbothered.

 

 

MAP02 featured both a monsters spawner and a Chasm-style catwalk segment over insanely deep nukage pit with avoidable rising cyberdemon platform, and really nothing else now that I think about it.  Never realized how tiny these early maps were.

 

 

The super secret map.  Look at all those right angles.  Bit more of a layout here, though not a good one since it's mostly switch hunts or rooms with a couple monsters and nothing else.  I playtested all these early maps with idfa so it may be impossible from pistol start.

 

 

My first public release, Feb 2008.  It was about 4 or 5 hand-drawn map concepts awkwardly stitched together, and it shows in a rather illogical layout.  My love of sprawl and wandery exploration is evident now.  Look at the size of the grid and you'll realize how cramped this whole map actually is.  Still didn't know how unpegging worked.

Edited May 28, 2023 by Stupid Bunny

[Mystic 256]

I don't have the really early unfinished maps I made from like 2008ish - 2014ish (some of them weird ideas like a Joke Megawad of Nutslike maps, and Hub based Underwater Palace)

 

but the earliest wad I still have is from 2015ish i think, and its a small techbase map (kr_baseoctave.wad / myz_octave.wad)

[EPICALLL]

OK, uhh... I can't possibly put into words how unfathomably bad my first few maps were.
So, have the prototype build (I.E. the build containing the first iterations of the maps) of the WAD they belonged to.
By the way, did I mention that for some reason it uses TNT as it's IWAD?

FINAL_DOOM_CLEANSING_OF_HELL.wad.zip

[Devalaous]

My first wad (and only wad) was a remake of Icon of Sin with *much* better texturing, with a random deathmatch maze around the whole level that I played botmatches in with the old Cajun bots. My brain farts in most level editors, can envision great things all day every day, but the moment a tool to make things is in my hands, my brain is empty.Insert other media