About level Doom level design

[Oweniyo]

Hello everyone!

 

I recently thought about the things I do in life and when I thought about making maps for Doom I started to ponder the question of usefulness.

The question I got for you peoples, is: How do you see/feel about doing maps for doom, or any build engine game for that matter? Would you say it's a useful trait to have; thinking any other possibilites, taking into account that you had a lot of learning to do and to spend quite some time trying and failing before achieving greatness? Or do you think nothing of it and purely do what you do because it's simply...fun and super cool to do? 

 

Speak and share your thoughts!

[Insaneprophet]

Creativity in ANY medium is a highly useful trait and can not only enrich but help to inform all other areas of ones personality and life.

[Major Arlene]

It's led to several people in this community getting jobs and making their own games so I'd say it's a pretty translatable skill. I do it because it's fun, personally, but the skills you learn can be useful.

 

There's obviously the level design aspect - which on its own can inform choices of what you like doing best - is it coding? environmental design? blocking-out? you can carve out your niche.

 

Some people even go on to lead their own projects which teaches leadership and teamwork.

 

But overall? One thing I want people to understand about creative endeavors is that we don't do them just because they are useful. Not every hour of our day has to be spent "contributing", to society or even to a community. Sometimes it's okay just to make something because you want to, because you have an idea that you want to put out into the world (or even just onto the UDB grid and left to rot on your hard drive, that's totally a fine option too).

[Sonikkumania]

I think it's a productive hobby which can lead one into more complex studies if interest wakes.

Besides that I don't think there's more than life to it.

For me it's very seasonal because there's no need to schedule any of mapping,

I finish them when I feel like it heh.

[SupremeBioVizier]

I only use gzdoom(I like the older versions) and slade3 which is a nightmare(seems to love ****ing with me) making maps for the past five months...staying up all hours, trying to get what I want made(despite any question of what others want to play but myself) has been a really positive thing, for a person like me, and I didn't have to spend any money on art supplies...I saw a person at Costco today with shorts, boots, long hair and a quake con shirt and I yelled out fuck yeah...when I tell people who knows me what ive been doing, they are like _____"anyways", but it brings me great positivity and joy even when slade screws with me. Video games are probably the most underappreciated form of art in my opinion, PC gamer magazine hitting the grocery stores was godsent. I look back thinking my life would be totally different if I got into doom mapping around that time. Skateboarding and video games...I ain't never growin old.

Edited December 4, 2023 by SupremeBioVizier

[lunchlunch]

From a utilitarian POV, making and playing mods is probably a huge waste of time. For the majority of people, I don't think learning to use editors for thirty-year-old computer games will prove a "useful" (read: marketable) skill.

 

But that's just the case with art. Spending time making it is usually not particularly "useful," it's just the best way I know of to have fun. I want to do nothing more with my life than draw, sculpt, write, customize, mod, create according to my heart's every whimsy. 

 

The only way to be "useful" with your artistic skills is marketing- drawing business logos, composing commercial jingles, 3D-modeling environments for military training exercises, or obtaining a creative-writing degree just to pen HR-culture empty-virtue BS for a company's social media page... In making art "useful," it's bastardized to the point that it doesn't resemble what we learned these skills for in the first place. For me, art is the joy of living, any job or career is just a way to support myself so I can while away the hours with my own creative passions. For most artists, we're not going to make a living from people buying our artwork, our books, our albums, or (more relevantly) getting hired on as full-time level designers somewhere.

 

Usefulness, the ability to be productive, I don't think is really the point with art. Art hobbies might even be anti-productivity. People can dress up the benefits of art in many ways- it's "culturally enriching," it "allows for therapeutic reflection," whatever, but at the end of the day art is really just a form of escapism for both the artist and the audience. Schopenhauer believed that life is entirely suffering, but he valued art because it allows one to momentarily forget oneself.

 

I've gotten way off-track from OP's topic but I wanted to humor this rambling thought on art's usefulness. I no longer know if I actually believe the things I say or if I'm just spitballing hypothetical ululations for my irony-poisoned contrarianism, but at this moment I feel that art itself is just pointless fun, a masturbatory, nihilistic exercise, and I would have it no other way. 

Edited December 4, 2023 by lunchlunch

[candyman64]

6 hours ago, SupremeBioVizier said:

I only use gzdoom(I like the older versions) and slade3 which is a nightmare(seems to love ****ing with me) making maps for the past five months...staying up all hours, trying to get what I want made(despite any question of what others want to play but myself) has been a really positive thing, for a person like me, and I didn't have to spend any money on art supplies...I saw a person at Costco today with shorts, boots, long hair and a quake con shirt and I yelled out fuck yeah...when I tell people who knows me what ive been doing, they are like _____"anyways", but it brings me great positivity and joy even when slade screws with me. Video games are probably the most underappreciated form of art in my opinion, PC gamer magazine hitting the grocery stores was godsent. I look back thinking my life would be totally different if I got into doom mapping around that time. Skateboarding and video games...I ain't never growin old.

I foun Slade 3 to be just the perfect tool! I remember using XWE and Slade is no doubt better

[Insaneprophet]

Useful doesnt mean, makes money or gets one a job. Useful just means something that can be used. And though most art is not profitable it is certianly useful.

[Bri0che]

I asked to myself this question so many time if you knew… It's not only about Doom, but others hobbies I have, like music and literature.

 

Someone above said a similar thing, but sometimes doing a thing just and only because you like to do it is fine and may be a justification to do it so, all by itself. There is no game manual for life, you do whatever you want, and you will born, breath, and die exactly the same way as if you become a rich person or a poor unlucky man anyway… What I mean by this is that the value of a thing doesn't necessarily belong to be a "gain" of something, purely because this is ultra subjective ! See, having fun is the gain of Doom mapping to me, as it is for video games and the rest, it's nothing else.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Bri0che

[Gifty]

Learning to be good at anything that enriches you and connects you with a community is nearly always a positive, and it's a trap to let commerce dictate your view of what is or isn't a valuable pursuit. Pretty much every artistic medium is considered a waste of time in its infancy, and video games were certainly considered that for pretty much all of the 20th century. But some of the most influential games of all time (particularly shooters) had their origin in mods, including almost all of Valve's gameography. Even if video games were not a legit billion-dollar business, the ever-shrinking list of pursuits or community spaces where one isn't asked to spend money, hustle, commercialize/"brand" themselves, or otherwise generate commercial value makes communities like this more extraordinary and more valuable every year.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Gifty

[magicsofa]

17 hours ago, Oweniyo said:

doom, or any build engine game for that matter?

 

 

GET OUT

 

Quote

Would you say it's a useful trait to have

 

Doom mapping is definitely useful for a lot of reasons.

 

- Having fun is useful by itself. If you never have fun, you'll become a depressed lump of a human. Life circumstances often require us to do difficult tasks that aren't necessarily that enjoyable, usually in the form of a job where you aren't really working for yourself. Having a project to work on that you actually enjoy (and where nobody else is telling you what to do) is, in my opinion, a very helpful contrast to the daily grinds that we do out of necessity.

 

- Mapping combines the aesthetic work of building nice looking levels, with logical problem solving, which I think are both useful pursuits for the brain. Both of these areas can translate to so many things in the rest of your life. On the aesthetic side, it can make you a better artist in other mediums, but also can improve your organization and presentation abilities. On the logic side, you are doing more than you think. You are balancing resources (items) against costs (monsters/obstacles). You are creating and/or modifying a sort of work-flow (level layout and progression). You are making constructions that have moving parts which require you to take into account various possibilities in terms of the positions of those parts and how that affects the level's function.

 

- Aside from the "in-game" logic, you are also (hopefully) learning how to efficiently use your editor. Most of us started by painstakingly drawing out the most basic rooms with lots of hiccups along the way, but over time became more proficient at building faster and with more complexity, by taking advantage of more advanced editor features, being better at planning ahead, consolidating repeated tasks, setting up the controls to fit our work flow, and so on. This by itself is useful pretty much anywhere, as you will be able to identify ways to improve your work flow.

 

- Sharing your maps with others and listening to feedback is not necessarily part of the skill itself, but definitely useful in all of life as you will be able to improve yourself more easily if you can listen to criticism with an open mind. It is also a source of pride when people enjoy your creations and while that shouldn't become an all-consuming reason to map, it is healthy to feel good about your work and getting just one positive review can help that immensely. 

Edited December 4, 2023 by magicsofa

[OpenRift]

I'm going to assume that when you talk about "usefulness", you mean real world applications because I think most people do this for fun and passion for the game.

 

From my understanding, doom level design is a skill that can be directly translatable to getting jobs, however those certain jobs are rather niche and sadly aren't very in-demand. However, that's only in a vacuum and maybe (hopefully) I'm wrong about that.

 

Personally I'd say if you're looking to translate it to real-world skills, it should be a starting point where you're learning the principles of effective level design before jumping into more advanced and modern tools like that of Unity and Unreal, which are much more applicable skills if you want to get into the games industry.

[Async Unicorn]

I don't know why I'm trying to make maps, I think it's purely because of three things:
1. I lack people's attention and socializing so I want to drag some attention to my person.
2. I love this game, I love specific maps with specific rules so I want to make my.
3. I want to be a creative person, though I don't have a rich imagination and it takes a lot to become at least an average mapper, but still.

It's just an interesting hobby, I guess, because I don't get any money from it, but there's not so many things in my life where I can realize myself as an artist (?), so I thought it's better than doing nothing...

Edited December 6, 2023 by Vanilla+Unicorn

[Oweniyo]

Hello everyone!

 

I want to thank each and every one of your for your reply, it means a lot to have so many contributions!

I have figured that perhaps the term "useful" wasn't the best to use in this matter, as I found myself in moments when I question what I'm doing with my life whilst designing levels and that sometimes has a negative impact; as if I'm searching for some meaning in those situations aside from having a ton of fun and sharing. SLADE caused me some headaches in the beginning as well, but once you master it, and know what you're doing, even that can become exciting, especially when you're in the eyes of someone and it appears like magic to them, lol.

 

I loved that by reading your lovely opinions and comments I found a familiar patern that we do not differ much, and share a ton of love for this kind of work and art in general; the way it keeps us up, the way we do it just for ourselves because in a way, it identifies us--overall through art and that alone is reward for us to keep going.

I'll know where to ask, should an interesting question like this one occur once more.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to share!