What is your best tip for beginners? ('what format to start with' split)

[NightRiding Doom]

On 9/17/2023 at 9:17 AM, RataUnderground said:

Dont use UDMF, that format will confuse and distract you. Learn the basics first in Doom2 format or Boom.

I actually suggest starting with Boom or UDMF, as they are much more logical and easier to pick up than Doom2 format. They also have more consistent tutorials. 

 

For beginner (From beginners point of view)
 

Advantages of BOOM:

• The editing basics work for almost any format
• Wide audience
• Generalized actions make it a lot more easier to create and edit maps, especially doors, lifts and other similar things
• Advanced editing features are not that hard to pick up (Voodoo dolls)
• Good to pick up before Doom2, as it does also use Doom2 actions. 
• Additional tools needed (Slade3,WhackEd4), but you can customize your wad significantly more than in Vanilla(Vanilla+) formats.
• Good mapping habbits carry over to every format

Disadvantages of BOOM:

• Hard to find tutorials consistently (Same as Doom2).
• Easier to pick up after UDMF
• Teleport can be a pain to work with.
• Textures are much better when they are created from patches, rather than used fully.
• People sometimes have expectation of voodoo doll usage.
• Need to be careful with Lower/Upper unpegged and Automatically aligning textures. (Windows for example need lower and upper unpegged on linedefs)

Advantages of UDMF:

• Very logical, thus easy to learn.
• Low skill floor, as it is easy to pick up doors, windows, and 3d floors for some more advanced features.
• Very consistent tutorials by all creators of Doom tutorials
• High skill ceiling, sky is the limit
• Only Slade3 and UDB needed.

Disadvantages of UDMF:

• Seriously high expectations from the community
• Scripting is also expected
• A lot easier to make mistakes, especially when using .pk3 format.
• Bad mapping habits may be missed until transitioning to other formats (One of them being tagless sectors).

[RataUnderground]

It is difficult for me to go into this topic in depth since English is not my primary language, but virtually everything you just said is either false or nuanced.

I will give it a try.
 

6 minutes ago, tumedaskihutaja_37685 said:

Disadvantages of BOOM:

• Hard to find tutorials consistently (Same as Doom2).
• Easier to pick up after UDMF
• Teleport can be a pain to work with.
• Textures are much better when they are created from patches, rather than used fully.
• People sometimes have expectation of voodoo doll usage.
• Need to be careful with Lower/Upper unpegged and Automatically aligning textures. (Windows for example need lower and upper unpegged on linedefs)

 

1- No. As far as I have seen, there is a lot of information available, represented in practically the same amount as doom2 and even more than UDMF.
2- Is this a disadvantage?
3- ...what?
4- ...what?
5- No. This is like saying that people expect you to use archviles if you make a Doom 2 map. It makes no logical sense to assume something like that.
6- You have to be careful with textures in all formats. The way texture offset works in Doom2 and Boom teaches you good habits.
 

Regarding everything you said about udmf, I do not deny that it is the format that offers more freedom and possibilities, but I say that it is the worst to learn how to make good maps. I didn't say you should do your wad in Boom, I said learn how to do wads with boom because you will avoid getting distracted and making mistakes that are pits that novices often fall into.

The amount of detail, advanced features and possibilities that UDMF allows makes mappers get lost trying to do many things at the same time because the usual thing to start is to have many crazy ideas and be creative. That's why I advocate that a series of limitations help to focus learning. With UDMF the process of making a map is easy to drag on and be an agonizing process and then get mediocre results. Something that should be a matter of seconds takes half an hour because the novice mapper has the whim to use 3D floors and detailed with slopes and put in new textures and create new enemies, and weapons, and dynamic lighting, and scripts....
It's simply more than they can chew. And of course it doesn't always happen, but it is often the case.

 

[Jayextee]

1 hour ago, tumedaskihutaja_37685 said:

Teleport can be a pain to work with.

This point right here is indicative of precisely why I'd recommend limit-removing to begin with. Y'know what? Making a UDMF map and testing it in GZDOOM may well be the path of least-resistance to the newbie mapper. And maybe they learn how to make a few maps, but then decide "oh hey vanilla maps are all the rage, right? I SHOULD MAKE ONE!" and it's got FLATS on the walls and wall textures on the ceilings and zero-tagged lifts and so on and so forth. (And it works for them because they test this "vanilla" map in GZD, which just takes it)

 

Teleports are teleports. You tag the sector and linedef alike, then make sure the destination sector has a 'teleport destination' THING in it, and it's good to go. It works. It's like making a lift, properly, but with one extra step.

 

Is it a coincidence though, that I'm seeing the "start with UDMF" advice primarily from people with fairly-recent  DW signup dates? XD

Edited September 20, 2023 by Jayextee

[ramon.dexter]

1 hour ago, RataUnderground said:

It is difficult for me to go into this topic in depth since English is not my primary language, but virtually everything you just said is either false or nuanced.

I will give it a try.
 

1- No. As far as I have seen, there is a lot of information available, represented in practically the same amount as doom2 and even more than UDMF.
2- Is this a disadvantage?
3- ...what?
4- ...what?
5- No. This is like saying that people expect you to use archviles if you make a Doom 2 map. It makes no logical sense to assume something like that.
6- You have to be careful with textures in all formats. The way texture offset works in Doom2 and Boom teaches you good habits.
 

Regarding everything you said about udmf, I do not deny that it is the format that offers more freedom and possibilities, but I say that it is the worst to learn how to make good maps. I didn't say you should do your wad in Boom, I said learn how to do wads with boom because you will avoid getting distracted and making mistakes that are pits that novices often fall into.

The amount of detail, advanced features and possibilities that UDMF allows makes mappers get lost trying to do many things at the same time because the usual thing to start is to have many crazy ideas and be creative. That's why I advocate that a series of limitations help to focus learning. With UDMF the process of making a map is easy to drag on and be an agonizing process and then get mediocre results. Something that should be a matter of seconds takes half an hour because the novice mapper has the whim to use 3D floors and detailed with slopes and put in new textures and create new enemies, and weapons, and dynamic lighting, and scripts....
It's simply more than they can chew. And of course it doesn't always happen, but it is often the case.

 

 

Maybe you should understand that vanilla and boom are good for Doom maps. But honestly, I've never made a doom map. I'm using gzdoom for my projects, which are not even nearing anything doom related. So, I see no point in learning boom/vanilla, when I actually dont map for doom at all.

And even if I wantto map for doom  I dont see a point in using vanilla or boom. Too limited, too nonsensical. Visplane overflow, for gods sake, why should I bother about this problem, which was caused by limited hardware at the time of origin? I get it that some people are accustomed to this format, and that is ok. But we got 2023, and when newbie wants to learn about mapping for a sector based engine, why should this newbie plague his experience with 30 year old stuff, that is not relevant anymore?

Everything you said are not facts, but your opinions, presented as facts. Also, what I wrote here, is my opinion, not a fact.

[Jayextee]

7 minutes ago, ramon.dexter said:

But we got 2023, and when newbie wants to learn about mapping for a sector based engine, why should this newbie plague his experience with 30 year old stuff, that is not relevant anymore?

Best practices are best practices, I guess. If you only plan on sticking to GZDOOM stuff, it's fine to remain there. OP didn't specify DOOM or otherwise, it's safe to assume that; on a DOOM forum of all things; we'd default to DOOMcentric responses.

[coderamen]

On 9/17/2023 at 1:17 AM, RataUnderground said:

Dont use UDMF, that format will confuse and distract you. Learn the basics first in Doom2 format or Boom.

 

On 9/17/2023 at 1:39 AM, ramon.dexter said:

My best tip? Avoid vanilla and go straight for udmf. You'll save yourself lot of headache and avoid lots of vanilla shenenigans.

LMAO! What is it? The community seems split over it.

[RataUnderground]

1 hour ago, ramon.dexter said:

 

Maybe you should understand that vanilla and boom are good for Doom maps. But honestly, I've never made a doom map. I'm using gzdoom for my projects, which are not even nearing anything doom related. So, I see no point in learning boom/vanilla, when I actually dont map for doom at all.

And even if I wantto map for doom  I dont see a point in using vanilla or boom. Too limited, too nonsensical. Visplane overflow, for gods sake, why should I bother about this problem, which was caused by limited hardware at the time of origin? I get it that some people are accustomed to this format, and that is ok. But we got 2023, and when newbie wants to learn about mapping for a sector based engine, why should this newbie plague his experience with 30 year old stuff, that is not relevant anymore?

Everything you said are not facts, but your opinions, presented as facts. Also, what I wrote here, is my opinion, not a fact.

Fair enough, I was assuming people were asking what is best to start in Doom mapping. If you go that way, I'd say the best format to learn is godot or maybe unreal engine.

Edited September 20, 2023 by RataUnderground

[Plut]

1 hour ago, ramon.dexter said:

Visplane overflow, for gods sake, why should I bother about this problem, which was caused by limited hardware at the time of origin?

You don't have to bother with limits if you're making a limit-removing Doom format or Boom map. Mapping for actual vanilla is quite a niche thing these days anyway.

Also agree on complexity of something like UDMF being a distraction. I've been mapping for 10+ years for Boom and limit-removing, to me level design is hard enough already to bother with bells and whistles that will add marginal value (and also will ruin any potential for speedrunning).

Edited September 20, 2023 by Plut

[NightRiding Doom]

3 hours ago, Jayextee said:

This point right here is indicative of precisely why I'd recommend limit-removing to begin with. Y'know what? Making a UDMF map and testing it in GZDOOM may well be the path of least-resistance to the newbie mapper. And maybe they learn how to make a few maps, but then decide "oh hey vanilla maps are all the rage, right? I SHOULD MAKE ONE!" and it's got FLATS on the walls and wall textures on the ceilings and zero-tagged lifts and so on and so forth. (And it works for them because they test this "vanilla" map in GZD, which just takes it)

 

Teleports are teleports. You tag the sector and linedef alike, then make sure the destination sector has a 'teleport destination' THING in it, and it's good to go. It works. It's like making a lift, properly, but with one extra step.

 

Is it a coincidence though, that I'm seeing the "start with UDMF" advice primarily from people with fairly-recent  DW signup dates? XD

Not a coincidence. it's because most of us posting "start with UDMF or boom" end up finding Vanilla way too confusing. The actions, when you read them, make no sense at all sometimes. Even with Crispy, which isn't pure vanilla. 

 

As for teleports, having monsters teleport around whole damn room with no idea how to fix it took me way too long to figure out in vanilla....and only after i figured it out in boom lol. This single issue is the single reason my first map was in UDMF (Ironicly, first published one was also in UDMF, with most of the UDMF features unused) and I started learning doom mapping in UDMF. it was much more easier and understandable to get it to work in UDMF and then transfer that knowledge to boom, and then to vanilla+.  My second map is currently in CP for Vanilla+ format, but I still find that way too...shall we say...annoying to deal with when there is a teleporter issue (Had to remake all closets because of a cocked up sector, that I don't even know how it got cocked up.)

I do agree on the pitfalls of doom tags, but UDMF has a fair share of their own. One of the many things is item tags, where I found it easier to have a bunch of debug lines just so I know it's an item triggered action, not a linedef triggered one. The other tag issue is the remote switch doors. Basic stuff, that get explained real fast in Lazygamer tutorials.  

 

As for flats on walls and textures on ceiling, I don't find it that disturbing, if used correctly. What I do find unsettling is the fact that GZDoom has taken over the interwebs with DSDA losing it's visibility until someone mentions it. In Boom, you have to make a patch out of a flat, and then create a texture, to use that flat. GZDoom removes that extra step, but as a result, also limits the knowledge about doom texture works. So yhea, on custom texture usage, even if it is only vanilla textures used incorrectly, GZDoom feels easier at first, but definetly is not later. 

 

There is also the fact that flat offset is one of the main things to use UDMF for. You can actually move the flat to right place instead of moving the whole map around for a single teleporter lol. Or having to rework half the map because of one flat being just slightly out of place. 

If we go by the path of least resistence, yhea, UDMF is that. But outside of zero tags and texture-flat conversions, I do not find anything else in UDMF pitfalls that would have not occured in any other format anyway. And there are a crapton of them.

 

3 hours ago, RataUnderground said:

1- No. As far as I have seen, there is a lot of information available, represented in practically the same amount as doom2 and even more than UDMF.
2- Is this a disadvantage?
3- ...what?
4- ...what?
5- No. This is like saying that people expect you to use archviles if you make a Doom 2 map. It makes no logical sense to assume something like that.
6- You have to be careful with textures in all formats. The way texture offset works in Doom2 and Boom teaches you good habits.
 

Regarding everything you said about udmf, I do not deny that it is the format that offers more freedom and possibilities, but I say that it is the worst to learn how to make good maps. I didn't say you should do your wad in Boom, I said learn how to do wads with boom because you will avoid getting distracted and making mistakes that are pits that novices often fall into.

The amount of detail, advanced features and possibilities that UDMF allows makes mappers get lost trying to do many things at the same time because the usual thing to start is to have many crazy ideas and be creative. That's why I advocate that a series of limitations help to focus learning. With UDMF the process of making a map is easy to drag on and be an agonizing process and then get mediocre results. Something that should be a matter of seconds takes half an hour because the novice mapper has the whim to use 3D floors and detailed with slopes and put in new textures and create new enemies, and weapons, and dynamic lighting, and scripts....
It's simply more than they can chew. And of course it doesn't always happen, but it is often the case.

 

 

 

I agree on nuanced.

1) I have not found a comprehensible information for Boom or Doom format in one clean slate anywhere. it's always bits and pieces and reminds of searching stuff on yahoo back when it first became a thing lol. 

2) Picking up boom is still a logic puzzle at first. it takes time to get used to it. So yhea, I'd consider harder to pick up(Higher skill floor) as a disadvantage).

3) Mostly when monsters teleport to a location that also has teleport lines, suddenly it becomes monster teleporting from port to port. took a while to figure out how not to let that happen. multiuple tutorials and searches later didn't find any answers until i changed the map format to UDMF just to watch lazygamers teleport tutorial, get it working, and then change back to boom (It's still in the works).

4)Most of the textures you ever need can be created with Slade3 texture editor. The downside is that you need to know how to do that. The bigger downside is that outside of already ready-made texture packs like 32in24 and Gothic or Darkzone packs, everything else is...well...almost incompatible or totally incompatible with default textures. So you end up having to work with texture patches more often than not, when on a solo project. And a lot of the times, you need to find more patches, not textures, from ready-made doom pwad files. And those are not easy to find. 

5) Have you ever seen a response to UDMF or Boom question thread? it is, unfortunately, quite common to get a guy or two to say "why not use ACS" or "why not use decorate" or "why not use vodoo" or "why not use boom instead of udmf" for a whole lot of stuff without actual explanation on how to get to doing whatever you need to do...or hell...i've seen some first mappers get flak for using UDMF for a map format and then player gets shocked when it's just a simple map. It's personal bias though, so I can not prove you wrong, but it does not mean we are both wrong(or right for that matter lol). 

6) That I agree on.

 

Thing about UDMF is, that it is far easier to find tutorials for UDMF, and then transfer those skills to Boom or Doom2. It is far harder to learn Doom2 and Boom, and then transfer that to UDMF. The downside of it, is, indeed the too many possibilities that end up being a noob trap, if used inadequatly, I am not sure if everyone gets lost on UDMF, but those with high creativity paired with restraint, usually find it easier to start with UDMF and move backwards, rather than the other way around. It is the way for me, i learn it in UDMF, then I see if I can transfer it to boom or doom2. if yes, good, if no, bad. 

The caveats are valid, especially the tagless sector ones. 

 

3 hours ago, ramon.dexter said:

 

Maybe you should understand that vanilla and boom are good for Doom maps. But honestly, I've never made a doom map. I'm using gzdoom for my projects, which are not even nearing anything doom related. So, I see no point in learning boom/vanilla, when I actually dont map for doom at all.

And even if I wantto map for doom  I dont see a point in using vanilla or boom. Too limited, too nonsensical. Visplane overflow, for gods sake, why should I bother about this problem, which was caused by limited hardware at the time of origin? I get it that some people are accustomed to this format, and that is ok. But we got 2023, and when newbie wants to learn about mapping for a sector based engine, why should this newbie plague his experience with 30 year old stuff, that is not relevant anymore?

Everything you said are not facts, but your opinions, presented as facts. Also, what I wrote here, is my opinion, not a fact.

You may find more success in ZDoom forums though. most ZDoom projects end up in ModDB or ZDoom forums before they come to doomworld or idgames archive.

 

4 hours ago, coderamen said:

 

LMAO! What is it? The community seems split over it.

This is pretty much what it is. It is a community split. The older audience like Boom and Doom because the pitfalls of newbie mapping are much more apparent than in UDMF. The younger generation likes UDMF because it is much more logical and simpler to learn, despite the overwhelming amount of possibilities.

[RataUnderground]

Now a player who is looking for advice on how to get started can read various arguments and make up his own mind. It is not so important who is right.

[Jayextee]

1 minute ago, RataUnderground said:

Now a player who is looking for advice on how to get started can read various arguments and make up his own mind. It is not so important who is right.

Pretty much this. I don't really see the point in shooting-down others' advice in here because, presumably, it all comes from a good place. A mapper's gonna start where they start, it's all good if you're making DOOM maps for us to play right?*

I think for anyone asking for newbie advice, filtering said advice is likely going to be their first and most-important skill; ask a hundred different mappers what they wish they'd have known when they started, you may well get a hundred different answers. The key thing is to take a look at who's giving said advice, what they've done, and how that weighs up in regards to what you personally want to achieve.

 

^{*; except I won't personally play UDMF maps since I primarily use prBOOM+ kek}

[baja blast rd.]

11 minutes ago, RataUnderground said:

Now a player who is looking for advice on how to get started can read various arguments and make up his own mind.

Tbh I think this is an awful way for anyone to spend time (especially since some of the posts contain misinformation, which a beginner won't be able to suss out). I split these parts because it's already approaching the entire wordcount of the rest of the posts with no end in sight, and greatly waters down the point of reading that thread (not that every post there was perfect, but at least it was trying). 

IMO the right answer is really just "pick the format that you're most motivated to work in." Picking something that is technically "slightly better" for learning doesn't matter if you're not as motivated to stick with it. The real early bottleneck of learning anything is sticking with it -- which is far from a guarantee. There are plenty of good examples of authors who've done well starting in every major format. 

[OliveTree]

i started out with doom in hexen format, i think. UDMF was a bit too intimidating for me. Nowadays it's not so bad imo. I'm certainly no expert, but it's nothing I can't figure out if I want to achieve a certain visual or gameplay scenario. It seems like no one ever uses hexen format these days, because udmf is just kind of better, but I thought it was a good balance of advanced and easy to wrap my head around at the time

[OliveTree]

9 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

Picking something that is technically "slightly better" for learning doesn't matter if you're not as motivated to stick with it. The real early bottleneck of learning anything is sticking with it -- which is far from a guarantee. There are plenty of good examples of authors who've done well starting in every major format.

sorry to double post but yeah this really is the core of the issue imo. At the same time, though, it's hard for a beginner to know which one they're motivated to work with, or even what the difference is

[Bridgeburner56]

14 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

IMO the right answer is really just "pick the format that you're most motivated to work in." Picking something that is technically "slightly better" for learning doesn't matter if you're not as motivated to stick with it. The real early bottleneck of learning anything is sticking with it -- which is far from a guarantee. There are plenty of good examples of authors who've done well starting in every major format.  

This ^
All formats are equally good to start with. They all have their own quirks, strengths and drawbacks. Pick the one that seems the most fun, or best supports the kind of maps you want to make. For the record I started with Doom in Hexen back in 2002.
 

[jazzmaster9]

14 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

IMO the right answer is really just "pick the format that you're most motivated to work in." Picking something that is technically "slightly better" for learning doesn't matter if you're not as motivated to stick with it. The real early bottleneck of learning anything is sticking with it -- which is far from a guarantee. There are plenty of good examples of authors who've done well starting in every major format. 

Absolutely this. I intially started with Doom Format with my first couple of maps but found it a bit too limiting to what i wanted so i switched to Doom in Hexen Format and then UDMF and that's what I mapped and learned with since.
Only really got back to Doom format mapping super recently after 6-7 years of Advance port Stuff.

[DoomPlayer00]

Just my two cents but IMO Doom2 / limit removing format is best for a beginner exactly due to its simplicity. It's especially good starting format if you've never even heard of Doom's editing tools like UDB or Slade.

 

It's important to learn the basics before moving on to more advanced stuff.

 

[rita remton]

my personal experience as a newbie mapper, from easiest to most difficult:

1. udmf: easiest because form etc (eg. size/shape of building, doors, windows, etc) is not dictated by texture size, etc. in udmf, you could control texture size etc.
2. boom: more difficult because form etc is dictated by texture. unless you want to edit the texture themselves. precision is also an issue compared to udmf. eg: you could not specify a platform to be raise precisely to 127mu.
3. limit-removing: more difficult than boom because you could not use boom's conveyor belts for sequenced events (eg. opening a monster closet door in front of the player, then 1 second later teleport other monsters behind the player).
4. vanilla: most difficult. usually reserved for highly experienced mappers due to mapping limitations. eg. visplane overflows, and other limits.

just my 2 cents as a newbie mapper. hope this small info helps. tq :)

Edited September 23, 2023 by rita remton

[Paf]

honestly, there is no reasonable format to start with because of how split everyone is on it imo

it's probably worth figuring out what you want to do and how easy a format is for you to use and start off of rather than listening to others on what would be the "best" format. it's not worth forcing yourself to a specific format simply because it has the most features or the least, it's worth putting in the time to check out and mess with each mapping standard instead imo, at least in the beginner stage

Edited September 28, 2023 by Paf

[Finnisher]

As someone who learned mapping in the 90s - only vanilla format there, no options, lol - and just recently picked up mapping again after around 25 years, I wanna say I'm in a rather unique spot because of that and wanna say a couple of things from that perspective.

 

First of all I can only imagine how much confusion the mapping formats give to someone completely new, I knew nothing of the new formats until recently and am barely getting into grips now with the formats and their differences on paper.

So far I've made one limit-removing map, I started with base format because that was what I was familiar with.

 

Having now got a grasp of what the differences are, and being rather happy how they remove the awkwardness of vanilla/limit-removing, even then I'd say limit-removing is the best way to start.

Yes, it is clumsier and less effective than Boom let alone UDMF but that's just since it adheres to the limitations of the original engine. Learning limit-removing makes you learn the very core basics and concepts and indeed not pickup bad habits, and being creative working around the limitations when trying to make your map work.

 

For example, you cannot have a monster teleport in on a timer but you can place said monster on a lowered sector (floor) that starts raising when you approach the monster closet. The monster can reach the teleport linedef only when the sector is 24 map units or less below the adjacent sector. Tweak the height to alter timing.

 

Limit-removing is also better than pure vanilla since you needn't worry about visplanes etc then, just map to your heart's content.

 

To also clarify to someone new possibly reading this, the bad habits like tagless sectors or FLATS used on walls are either not possible or do not work in limit-removing / vanilla mapping.

 

I do agree information is harder to come by, don't think I've found one comprehensive vanilla / LR mapping tutorial for Doom Builder. Let alone one that explains the differences between Doom Builder types properly, another thing a beginner would be clueless about. I know I was just 2 months ago.

 

PS: if you ask me needing to constantly offset textures or tweak linedef lengths or sector heights to make textures fit is an integral part of doom mapping, lols.

At least these days there's a visual mode letting you make adjustments on the fly, back in the DEU / DOS days you had no visual mode and had to load the map up every time you wanted to test something.

Awkward and time consuming sure, but you really learned to picture how something looks like in game based on just the 2D layout. You had to :D