What are your creative crutches?

[LVENdead]

We've all got them. What are your old reliables, your crutches, your safety nets when it comes to creativity (I'll say specifically with Doom content just to keep this reasonably on topic)? Do you ever strive to break these molds or do you have good reason for sticking to your guns? How many more turns of phrase can I fit in this question?

 

If you see someone else mentioning something similar to one of your current or old habits that maybe you've managed to eject from your routine, do you have any tips for that person?

 

I have many, but off the top of my head: PIPEWAL2 is my "I don't know what else to put here texture." It's great for detailing, breaking up continuity, it tiles well horizontally and doesn't care about linedef length. I love everything about it.

 

 

(I'd like to profess my undying love for PIPEWAL2)

 

Musically, I have a penchant for arpeggios to write my melodies and using slow strings to fill in the sound and make it more full. I write a lot of loops and then stack them on top of each other. Some day I hope to challenge this habit, but typically I just take the easy way out.

 

I showed you mine now show me yours!

 

 

[Snaxalotl]

My creative crutch is not letting textures repeat enough. Sure detailing is important and looks nice but I feel it can be too excessive and pointless eventually. My standards for myself are way higher than other mappers, its okay to have something like bricks or stone repeat for a large space but I can't bring myself to allow it even though I think it looks fine when other people do it. Also since I prefer mapping for vanilla it can be really tedious having so much alternating textures and dealing with the drawseg/visplane limits.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Snaxalotl

[Nuggets_games]

Edit: read the post wrong.

 

I’m terrible at texturing. Basically the opposite of @Snaxalotl, lol. I can’t be bothered to really make my own, and the detailing starts to frustrate me after a while.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Nuggets_games

[TerryMastermind]

9 minutes ago, LVENdead said:

Musically, I have a penchant for arpeggios to write my melodies and using slow strings to fill in the sound and make it more full. I write a lot of loops and then stack them on top of each other.

This guy gets it. There's just something so stimulating about looping arpeggios that I can't put into words. 

[Matt Eldrydge]

So far it seems to be atriums, big corridors, strangely shaped stairs, computers embedded in walls, 8-wide lights and light gradients. I haven't mapped enough to develop a proper style, but I also don't like having textures repeat too much like what Snax said above. Since I prefer limit-removing and Boom, I get to chuck as much detail as I like at my maps without worrying too much. :P

 

Also: adding a bit of doomcute to smaller rooms that might appear too empty. Usually a couch, maybe a chair, a painting, a table...small stuff like that.

 

I do have a lot of interest in gray textures, but I don't think me leaning into them is exactly a crutch and more something I just like doing.

[Insaneprophet]

Any time I want to write poetry, song lyrics or almost anything,my brain goes straight to death metal. No matter what Im thinking about, no matter how little it has to do with metal and how much its more about a common human thought pattern. My brain starts to rhyme about how a zombie or serial killer or viking would twist love into love of death, or happiness into happy to pillage or raising my child into raising the dead.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Insaneprophet

[Jayextee]

If in doubt when mapping, I tend to stick a big circular room with a staircase spiralling up the outside somewhere to connect two areas. Whoops.

[Sesamia]

Orthogonal lines because I'm often impatient (at least when making tech bases and using stock textures).  It's something that I'm trying to do less of.

[Somniac]

Almost every map I make these days seems to be some kind of techbase or industrial looking thing with rocky outdoor areas, which works easily with a variety of visual themes and fits the kind of brutalist looking architecture I enjoy making. Its become my go-to approach. Its working pretty well for me so far in that I'm more easily confident in that style, but I do want to try some other themes again. Plus, switching things up can be a fun challenge.

[DoomGappy]

Blood and marble always look good so you can basically draw a hall and some pillars and it will never look bad unless you purposefully go out of your way to make it so.

[Chookum]

I usually pick the MIDI for a map first and build around the feeling it provides rather than working with a map first and adding the MIDI later. In addition, I overlook Doom's original tunes and community-made MIDI for Doom for music from other games.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

1. Draw Ellipse Mode - If I'm building an arena, or any type of lock-in fight, it's almost always a circle (if not a semi-circle, or a chunk of it). Often times I'll even use Draw Ellipse Mode just to start a map, dividing the circle into layers and different pieces (with the stairbuilder tool), deleting chunks for pillars, raising/lowering different sections, expanding outward from any point; it usually gets me going in the right direction (even if the original circle is nearly gone / unrecognizable by the end). I probably got this penchant from Dragonfly, but, I stick to it mostly because of Doom's AI. An arena made of circles and rounded edges (regardless of how complex it is, to a certain degree) seems to provide better movement / pathfinding for monsters. That said, it's also just become habitual / comfortable.

 

2. Jimmy MIDIs - When I go looking for a song, 9 times out of 10 I'll dive into his MIDI folder first. I've used a lot of Jimmy's music in my maps and his repository seems to often have just the right thing I need at the time (probably due in part to how prolific he's been). I have used a lot of other composers' work as well, but, I guarantee I probably looked through Jimmy's stuff first, haha. 

 

3. Music, coffee, and cigarettes - The jittery backbone of every map I've made in the past 5 years. 

[LVENdead]

31 minutes ago, Chookum said:

I usually pick the MIDI for a map first and build around the feeling it provides rather than working with a map first and adding the MIDI later. In addition, I overlook Doom's original tunes and community-made MIDI for Doom for music from other games.

 

This is how I map too and in fact I've gotten to the point where I need to write the MIDI before I can make much headway on my maps. I don't know what it is, but I'll spend 30 minutes or more skimming through the various MIDIs I've accumulated and then decide I don't like any of them so I open Sekaiju and start with that.

 

7 minutes ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

3. Music, coffee, and cigarettes - The jittery backbone of every map I've made in the past 5 years. 

 

Up until recently it was music, booze, and bud for me. Get nice and toasted and find my flow state. Recently it's just been music and bud.

[Ar_e_en]

1. Is the wall too small to horizontally fit the given texture? Just split the texture in the middle with 1 new vertex and move the end part back so it fits with the first part!
2. Are the wall textures too boring? Create a sector with a height of zero and texture the upper and lower parts to create something a bit different! That is a 2 part wall, but (if you're feeling a bit more adventurous) you can also use a midtexture and create a 3 part wall!
3. Do you miss having the Boom voodoo doll scripting features on your vanilla / limit removing map? Just use Lost Souls as voodoo dolls! Sure, they can only open doors and lower lifts, but it's better than nothing, and with a bit of creativity - you can actually force the doors to never close and the lifts to never raise.
4. Map feeling a bit too short? Just force the player to backtrack throughout the level! Now it's at least a bit longer and you didn't have to add more sectors!

[Ar_e_en]

11 minutes ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

2. Jimmy MIDIs - When I go looking for a song, 9 times out of 10 I'll dive into his MIDI folder first. I've used a lot of Jimmy's music in my maps and his repository seems to often have just the right thing I need at the time (probably due in part to how prolific he's been). I have used a lot of other composers' work as well, but, I guarantee I probably looked through Jimmy's stuff first, haha. 

Yeah, I tend to do this too. Although, i might try my hand at making a few midis (or maybe even mod files) in the future. I just gotta find the right programs. 

[Treehouseminis]

Stair sectors where the textures change every other stair, 2 toned stairs etc.  Same thing with walls, Break it up with repeating similar textures, 2 colors usually.

 

Random pillars in the middle of rooms to break it up to make combat more interesting. 

 

Geometrical patterns on floor and ceiling to make it look cool/Abstract.  Different sector heights etc.

[Naarok0fkor]

[Li'l devil]

CRATES, MORE CRATES

[NiGHTS108]

Recreating that stupid thing in Plutonia MAP15 where the Arch-Viles infinitely resurrect those Chaingunners normally with other enemies. I love that gimmick. So much.

[Xaser]

Towers. 'Nuff said.

[LoatharMDPhD]

missing textures, HOM, breaking the engine by putting teleport destinations straddling multiple sectors so the monsters warp in high then fall down to level, a' la' world war Z.{Zed}.

[Emperor S P O O N]

Hoo, boy, where do I begin?

I'll spoiler this so that the thread isn't getting a massive unavoidable wall of text.

Spoiler

Let's start with the obvious:

1. Pencil & Grid Paper. I have a stack of used grid paper dedicated to piling up drawings of my maps. I find it comfortably engaging to draw out a draft of the map first before putting it into the editor. That way, I don't feel as if I'm wasting any time trying to think of a good layout while UDB is open. Now, this strategy doesn't work quite well with natural environments, but some squiggles are all I need to get a good idea for those because you don't have to be too precise with the off-grid stuff depending on what you're doing.
2. Custom Textures. I've worked with the vanilla textures before, and I've done pretty okay with them. Some combinations of vanilla textures I actually like a lot. But unless I have to use vanilla textures, I honestly try to add some form of variety to the palette with, at the very least, vanilla-derived/inspired textures.
3. Music Playlists. On Youtube, I have a dedicated playlist for mapping that I keep private. Most of it is Midi music to keep the idea juice flowing in the right direction. Other tracks are ones that I just find enjoyable to listen to regardless of what I'm doing, and other ones are simply some nostalgia picks. And if Youtube gets picky or if I simply don't like Youtube at the moment then I've got a plethora of midis to choose from that I have in my folders to play through Windows Media Player. Yea, listening to music can be distracting especially for me who has ADHD, but sometimes the rush comes from the feel of the music itself.
4. Stair-Builder Tool. I think everyone can understand this one. No further explanation needed.
5. Curved Staircases. Idk why, but a rounded staircase gives me a sense of flow to the map much more so than regular stairs.
6. Looping Back to Previously Visited Areas. Idk if I'd call this a crutch or just a good level design preference, but I love this sort of thing nonetheless.
7. Patience. Look, sometimes the ideas don't come when I want them to. They just appear, and I have to catch it before the idea gets lost in the other ideas building on top of it and I lose all enthusiasm for actually making it because I forgot what the original concept was. It's a weird quirk of my brain that I just have to learn to deal with.
8. Pillars That Overlap Between Two Ceiling/Floor Heights. I just think it's a neat visual design, and I don't think I could ever make a normal map without them.
9. Doomcute. It's important for me, as a designer, to know what kind of story I'm telling through the environment. Whether that be some corpses and a weapon with some ammo strewn about or maybe even an apartment in a building with an animated television and running shower head. The smallest of details, for me, should never go unnoticed, and I think that may be to my detriment. Sometimes I get so focused on the environmental storytelling that I forget I'm making a Doom map and in the end I can't make the player think about it as hard as I do.
10. Player Feedback. Hear me out: I don't trust myself. I can have an idea and I'll run with it for as far as I'm willing, but its execution will be hit-or-miss. More often than not, it misses, and then I have to put it through the wringer. Is that how mapping, and game design now that I think about it, generally goes? Yea, but sometimes I wish I can make something and not sap away any good first impressions with it. Is it a confidence problem? Yes, but also no. I don't know that confidence has anything to do with it more than my own understanding of my track record for missing the mark. I'm sorry if this sounds self-deprecating, but that really is how I see it.

 

I have a lot of things I use as a crutch when doing creative work for Doom. I've focused mostly on the mapping side of it because there's just too many things that supplement my creative process. Sometimes I don't even know if it really is me making it or if I'm imitating the distorted reflections of the collective works of people around me like some bat in a swarm not sure where they're going or why but following the flock regardless. Sorry this sounded sappy towards the end, but I don't really know how else to put it.

 

[LoatharMDPhD]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kQqBhQjjXp2TfTS99IUNDbgoC5oeiFiF/view?usp=sharing

 

just poke through her and count the tropes...

 

using dead marines with gear and medical supplies for pickups. rather than health bonus' in a row, ill stack em, or with a dead UAC-USMC ill leave a body, some blood, a backpack, 11 or so armor bonus stacked a' la armor shards from doom3 and a medikit and stimpack on medium and easy or just the stim or kit on hard. soldiers usually carry an individual first aid kit and then in their pack a squad support kit.

Edited November 22, 2023 by LoatharMDPhD

[HiMyNameIsChair]

Oh, i definitely know mine: Natural landscapes. I'd rather find a way for my map to take place in a cave or outside than have it be in a techbase lol.

 

more specifically: when I think an area needs something: add slimefall/waterfall, without fail.

[Mr. Freeze]

[Chookum]

Another thing I like doing, and this leans into the Arcade-y nature of Doom is to have long rows/lines of Health or Armour bonuses. Bonii? Either way they get used to guide the player and as a reward for staying mobile in larger spaces. Sometimes I just like drawing patterns out of these pickups.

 

When you have a mod on that changes the pickup sounds, it sounds nice to hear dozens of bottles go clink-clink-clink-clink or armour bonuses go chak-chak-chak-chak.

 

In addition, I like to lean on natural environs and have considered techbases to be one of my sore spots, but I think I've gotten some good experience with them.

[Grotski]

always try to make some kind of landmark or eye-draw that stands out for each area of a map. usually only get one per level though because i'm lazy lol.

[xdarkmasterx]

45° angles

[EPICALLL]

My undoubtable creative crutch is Revenants.
Every single map I have made (with 1 or 2 exceptions) has at least 1/6 of it's monster populous being those damn boney boys. Even in maps where I focus mainly on designing good encounters, they will still involve a revenant in one way or another. I mean, they're a good enemy type, but god damn do I wayyyy overuse them.

[Lucius Wooding]

I've realized that my biggest spark for creativity, and probably biggest motivator in general, is spite. I often have a hard time believing in a given idea enough to be productive with it, but if my goal is something different it can break a creative block and draw out a muse I can't really force.