Your Level Start Designs

[DiavoJinx]

Curious to see how people like to start out levels.

 

• Hot start (where some monsters are aggro'd immediately) or quiet & alone?
• Big/open area or a smaller room?
• Move on immediately or do the classic side-scroller thing of a hidden cache of item(s) immediately left-of-spawn? (E3M3 Pandemonium comes to mind having corridors for the multiplayer starts that also provide a single player some extra items if they think to explore those alcoves instead of moving out to the obvious 3 areas.)
• Starting area just part of the overall map, or a kind of "prelude" where you linearly guide the player down a set path for force an experience?
• Other designs I didn't think to mention...?

 

Personally I don't like hot starts and prefer a quiet (calm/spooky) start in a smallish room. (This is ironic for me as my first map Doomed Mansion had a hot start in a big open area, lol.) I think I like the start of a map to be somewhat linear at first until it opens up to the rest of the map.

[Lucius Wooding]

Not a hot start necessarily. But I like the player to find out they're in trouble pretty quickly.

[Jayextee]

Starting out with just one of those is for losers. I like to mix it up, depending on the overall flavour of the map in question.

[Xaser]

One question I always ask is "what's the first thing the player is going to see?", and then do my best to make the answer "something cool." There's a ton of different ways to open a map, gameplay-wise, but a really nerdy lesson I learned in the DTWID days (thanks to E1M1's iconic start room) is you don't want to bury the lede when it comes to showing off the interesting parts of your map -- whether that be architecture/visuals, atmosphere, a preview of the massive slaughterfight you're about to get into, and so forth.

 

Couple of random visual examples of mine (thumbnails clickable for higher-res):

 

 

While I'm waxing poetic, this is something we talked about a bunch for Supplice's first episode -- the game's story kinda necessitated starting you underground somewhere, but I really didn't want the first thing the player sees to be a boring old cave. Doom's approach to this was "show some interesting architecture", Duke3D went with "show a cool scripted sequence", so I figured, "why not both?", and the crane drop was born.

 

[Baron T. Mueriach]

I like it to start out in a smaller room, with multiple visible pathways you could go, to me it signifies fluidity and encourages me to see more. Hot starts can be fun or sometimes necessary if the point of the map is to get players moving quick because the map is large and requires constant progression.

 

Hot starts are more of a Doom II thing, whereas the slower, more ambient starts are a Doom I thing. That can be interchanged of course, but enemies like Mancubi and Archviles are the leading cause of running around like a headless chicken scrambling to find cover.

[VICE]

I'm very fond of E3M1 that has you raise into a hot start in a completely new environment at the press of a spooky-looking switch.

Edited May 27 by VICE

[Maximum Matt]

The ones where you start with a cyberdemon right in front of you

[Lizardcommando]

If it's a tech base: Start with a small square room, make a fake door that on one end of the room and the entrance to the rest of the level at the other end of the room. The fake door's sector is significantly darkened so that it tells players (theoretically) that any other doors that are placed in a darkened sector will usually not work, throw in some random small ammo clips or shells, some stimpacks, and done.

 

If it's in an outdoor (non-urban) setting: Start with a medium square room, change the ceiling texture to a sky texture, the floor texture to something outdoorsy (like grass or dirt) split the sidedefs in the room a bunch, stretch the lines apart randomly and then start putting in more sectors next to it and give it some random floor heights, throw in some random small ammo clips or shells, some stimpacks, a shotgun or chaingun if I feel generous and done.

 

If it's an outdoor (urban) setting: Start with a large square room, change the ceiling texture to a sky texture, the floor texture to something outdoorsy (like grass or dirt or concrete/asphalt), place some other sectors down to simulate a street, throw in some random small ammo clips or shells, some stimpacks, a shotgun or chaingun if I feel generous and done.

[Stabbey]

I dislike hot starts and prefer to give the player a few moments to get their bearings. I like the first thing the player sees to be significant.

 

More Tricks and Traps than You Desire: A lit up "Exit" pattern on the floor, pointing in two directions, one high and one low to two places barricaded with bars for all three keys.

Nukage Treatment Pools: It shows the exit building across a moat of nukage, a broken bridge to the left, crates floating below in the pool, and "OVERFLOW POOL" written on the ground.

Dead in Five Minutes: This is an exception to the "no hot start rule," as the player starts out pressed up against a wall of barrels seeing three chaingunners facing them before them. This is to make the player immediately start moving and thus crossing over some important triggers.

Control Tower: Looking out the window of an elevator, high above the ground. Moving a little will start the elevator moving, and looking out the window, the building in front is revealed to have the top wrecked.

Water, Fire, and Blood: The player is in a stone building, facing out into the open and the three temples - and the keys they need are visible from the starting position.

 

Edited May 28 by Stabbey

[Gifty]

I like "warm" starts where the player is faced with multiple unalerted monsters and multiple starting paths, and gets to choose their first move before every baddy on the block wakes up.

[Doom-X-Machina]

I like a combination of all of them. 32 maps in a WAD that all start the same is kinda boring. Gotta mix it up.

[yakfak]

i don't care if the opening shot is totally contraindicative of the rest of the map \o/ have the player start facing a wall for all i care

my maps are for people who wanna indulge my dumb take on the game i'm not trying to impress them

 

fave type of start is where you're in a position that you know it won't be easy to get back to once you start doing things

like a raised section in plain view of a bunch of enemies that also has an obviously unactivated lift or what have you

and your choices are jump off towards the nukage

or jump off towards the enemies

Edited May 28 by yakfak

[ALilGrayBoi]

Doesn’t matter what it is. As long as a player can figure out where to go it’s ok. I have seen new players get lost in e1m1’s starting room 

[Pechudin]

Depends what the "lore" of the map is, as my maps are often quasi-realistic. Depicting a bank siege? Start behind a sandbag wall, under fire from Manc turrets. Infiltration scenario? Start in a box, or in an alley etc.

[Majin]

i never really put much thought into it but looking back i think all my starting rooms have some things in common. they never have danger in them, i treat starting areas as safe zones because being thrusted into action is annoying to me, sometimes i like to sit there for a minute testing the settings or immersing myself in the setting. they usually give an introduction to the theme of the level, has a vantage point to see the rest of the level and sometimes includes a secret. 

[rita remton]

my starting rooms are usually near the level exit room. at the end of the map, the player could then choose whether to exit, or be at the start of the map to find missed secrets. i long to have sweeping vistas at the start rooms where the player could explore, but my newbie mapping skills (had only published 6 maps so far) are simply not that level yet.

[Li'l devil]

Never thought much about them. Pretty sure I've done all types of level starts, from hot starts to warm starts, to starts where there's nothing to look at. I think my favorite kind of level start is when you immediately see a shotgun or another weapon in front of you. I did this kind of start as well.

Edited May 28 by Li'l devil

[LadyMistDragon]

A small room, always, because it helps to get something down before starting on the main map. As to what that might consist of....I've done little Doomcute cabins but in many cases, plain room can be enough, if you're not caring so much about visual storytelling.

[Dahbeez]

I did this one on map 7 of my wad called Lost Underworld. As soon as you start, there are imps throwing fireballs at you from afar. Directly behind you, there are some shotgunners. So if you start shooting at the imps right away, the shotgunners will start blasting you from behind, but if you let the fireballs fly passed you, they'll usually knock out a barrel by the shotgunners and it'll blow them up. Idk I tried to make it something different. I've done a lot of different starts. Usually I like when you start and there's a bunch of enemies in front of you, but they all have their backs turned to you so you can get a layout of the area a bit before you aggro them. 

 

Spoiler

[DiavoJinx]

18 hours ago, Dahbeez said:

I did this one on map 7 of my wad called Lost Underworld. As soon as you start, there are imps throwing fireballs at you from afar. Directly behind you, there are some shotgunners. So if you start shooting at the imps right away, the shotgunners will start blasting you from behind, but if you let the fireballs fly passed you, they'll usually knock out a barrel by the shotgunners and it'll blow them up. Idk I tried to make it something different. I've done a lot of different starts. Usually I like when you start and there's a bunch of enemies in front of you, but they all have their backs turned to you so you can get a layout of the area a bit before you aggro them. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Oooooooooooh, brilliant!

[elborbahquarama]

after stumlbing upon this thread i went ahead and booted up all of my favorite levels in the world to see what the first frame of each looked like lol

Spoiler

 

[yakfak]

^ :D NEIS e2m7 spotted?

[DiavoJinx]

29 minutes ago, elborbahquarama said:

after stumlbing upon this thread i went ahead and booted up all of my favorite levels in the world to see what the first frame of each looked like lol

Awesome sample!!

[elborbahquarama]

oh and because he seems to be found of those, have those opening shots of my favorite levels from mister xaser

Spoiler

 

[Yousuf Anik]

In the first map of my project, Doomguy starts from his base (it's actually based on the fortress/base that Doomguy starts his journey on Doom Eternal :D). It will be a somewhat relax start, usually what I didn't applied on my previous maps. This one I thought to make it something different.

 

Edited May 31 by Yousuf Anik

[Stupid Bunny]

I've done a few different kinds of starts over time--I use hot starts sparingly, but I find it fun to encounter one every so often and so I have done a few here and there.

 

The music and opening visuals really complement each other and should both set the tone for what the map will be like--a suspenseful slow burn? Frenetic action? Epic? Lots of traps?

 

A few examples I suppose
 

Spoiler

Accompanied by moody, unsettling, kind of quiet music. What is inside this house? Doesn't look like a nice place in there

 

Starts with more up-tempo but still ominous soundtrack.  Otherwise similar, in that it starts outside an entrance to the level's action.  I start quite a few in front of a doorway or gate like this.

 

Also a lot that start like this, either facing or in the middle of where the action will be, but with no monsters visible just yet.  At least not until you move or shoot or something.

 

Accompanied by minimal, ominous horror type music.  Pretty obvious that some shit is going to happen as soon as that shotgun gets got

 

I don't normally like to start nose to nose with a door or switch but sometimes it's a good way to tell the player "the action starts as soon as you do this thing".  E3M1 is a good IWAD example of this.

 

As an alternative to the doors and entrances above I sometimes like a short lead-in area that exists for no purpose other than to provide both a safe starting point and also build a bit of tension.  This one also starts with more low-key and ominous music and it is a fair bit of walking before a single enemy is encountered.

 

Given my appreciation for giant open spaces with enormous structures in them, I don't actually start many levels with them visible

 

rare hot start

 

 

 

[Yousuf Anik]

@Stupid Bunny oh dear these looks so cool, though some of them looks a bit weird like Nazis with Mancubi and SSG flowing on space!

[LegendaryEevee]

@DiavoJinx I have gone on record many times for saying @Dragonfly 's  Eviternity is my favorite WAD to date.  It also contains my favorite level to date [Map19 - Dehydration] with endless exploration opportunities. 

 

     However if you ever wanted a more magical and magestic opening to what you know is going to be something grand and unbelievable nothing I have ever seen does it better than this shot.  I have gone on record for saying I LOVE [MAP26 (E6M1) - Transcendence] but wasn't a fan of the combat in this level (Cryonology's slaughter section at the Gazebo is literally the greatest thing I have ever witnessed in DooM!).  But nothing takes away from the shock and awe you get in those first few moments of this level.  You just know you're in for a treat!

 

[Uncle 80]

I usually have my maps linked together, where one map's exit is the next map's starting room, and this does indeed lead to some starts being non-descriptive "liminal spaces", as the current buzzword is for these kinds of rooms. But I generally like to keep a "grand" area with some nice visuals setting the theme & tone for the map close to the start. When playing, I often prefer a "cold" start myself, i.e. not getting dropped into a hot spot right at the beginning (as I'm a "filthy casual"). Starting the player out in a "boring" location is also a good challenge for map design - how do you make that boring old cave interesting enough at first glance so the player doesn't immediately idclev to the next map in hope of a striking vista right after the screen melt?

[DiavoJinx]

28 minutes ago, Uncle 80 said:

I usually have my maps linked together, where one map's exit is the next map's starting room

Very cool -- I've been doing something similar where each map in my set ends with a dungeon-brick aesthetic room followed by some winding curved stairs down, down, down and then you arrive at a classic Doom exit door. Pressing on what looks like the classic exit door ends the level. The next level starts in a room with the same texture & aesthetic (Rock1), with what looks like the other side of that door immediately behind you.

I'm also doing something to help your mind link this as the same continual area: just as you arrive at this dungeon-brick area, I set a walk-over linedef to change the music to the next level's music. (IDK if anyone's done that before; I haven't seen it myself.)