Detailing advice

[Phade102]

Hi all. I'm currently working on a map, and i've been doing fine up until this specific room.

 

The inner area with the arachnotrons starts off fully enclosed, and it opens up later. However, I feel the green portions are simply too plain. I was wondering if anyone can give me some advice on some minor details and such I could add to make it a bit more attractive?

 

[Not Jabba]

The best way to figure out detailing is to open up detailed maps in Doom Builder and see what other people have done that you like. For a space like that, some basic possibilities could include monster ledges, raised "garden" areas with dead trees, craters in the ground, and wall insets/trim/overhangs.

[Phade102]

15 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

The best way to figure out detailing is to open up detailed maps in Doom Builder and see what other people have done that you like. For a space like that, some basic possibilities could include monster ledges, raised "garden" areas with dead trees, craters in the ground, and wall insets/trim/overhangs.

Those are some awesome ideas. thanks Not Jabba!

[baja blast rd.]

Plain green grass looks fine imo. Mechadon's Counterattack is one of the most visually complex releases out there, and he uses mostly uniform green grass, without microdetail. What I notice in your shot is a lack of lighting contrast: everything is very bright. The structural elements are also pretty simple. If you do want to change something, I think you'd get more mileage out of additional architecture.

 

If I were to change the grass, I might use either a composite of GRASS2 and RROCK19 (these textures are natural complements), or I'd throw in one or two medium-sized and cleanly shaped pools of water or pits of mud -- something along those lines. Nothing too 'small' though, unless you are willing to stick with it as a repeated scheme, instead of just a one-off detail. 

[Bauul]

A few possible ideas off the top of my head (I'm not saying do all of these or specifically these, but hopefully they'll give you some inspiration)

 

• Scatter some Things about, especially trees.
• Create some irregular sectors in the middle of the grass area and give them a different grass texture
• Create some thin "trench" type sectors running through the grass area.  Drop them by 8 units and give them a soil or dirt type texture.
• Create a lake in the corner, add some rock formations around it.  Blue water and green grass always look nice together.
• Use a different texture for the outside wall, perhaps one with vines climbing over it.
  • Or even better, create a new Texture by combining the current wall you have with the usual Doom vine patch.

Remember, Doom works best when painting in large brush strokes.  Be bold with your detailing and you can make an area visually interesting without too much effort.

 

[Not Jabba]

3 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

Plain green grass looks fine imo. Mechadon's Counterattack is one of the most visually complex releases out there, and he uses mostly uniform green grass, without microdetail. What I notice in your shot is a lack of lighting contrast: everything is very bright. The structural elements are also pretty simple. If you do want to change something, I think you'd get more mileage out of additional architecture.

I noticed that too. I was trying to think of how to detail floors, so I went to check out Counterattack, because it's a detailed wad with huge spaces, and my jaw dropped when I realized all the floors in the whole set were completely uniform; all sense of floor detailing is created with lighting.

[Phade102]

11 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

Plain green grass looks fine imo. Mechadon's Counterattack is one of the most visually complex releases out there, and he uses mostly uniform green grass, without microdetail. What I notice in your shot is a lack of lighting contrast: everything is very bright. The structural elements are also pretty simple. If you do want to change something, I think you'd get more mileage out of additional architecture.

 

If I were to change the grass, I might use either a composite of GRASS2 and RROCK19 (these textures are natural complements), or I'd throw in one or two medium-sized and cleanly shaped pools of water or pits of mud -- something along those lines. Nothing too 'small' though, unless you are willing to stick with it as a repeated scheme, instead of just a one-off detail. 

Yeah, i'm not fantastic at lighting. I am practicing, but I'll keep working on it.

[torekk]

I found Realm667 pretty useful on this: http://www.realm667.com/index.php/en/90-articles/tutorials-more/mapping/318-mapping-the-art-of-high-detail?showall=1

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

22 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

I noticed that too. I was trying to think of how to detail floors, so I went to check out Counterattack, because it's a detailed wad with huge spaces, and my jaw dropped when I realized all the floors in the whole set were completely uniform; all sense of floor detailing is created with lighting.

 

I get the impression that what most people think of as "detail" isn't actually detail at all, but rather good-practice usage of angles, architecture, texturing, lighting and color. If BTSX used IWAD textures, I imagine you'd get something that looks a lot like more like a fancy DTWID than, say, KDIZD.

 

When I make my maps, the word "detail" isn't something that crosses my mind at all. Focus more on envisioning an overall space in your head.

Edited May 19, 2017 by Marnetstapler

[leodoom85]

Lighting helps a lot while detailing a map, it gives a proper immersion to the map that you're in. Curiously, in the Counterattack mapset, there's not much detailing for the floors, which is a surprise. I admit that I don't put much detail for the floors though. Also, height changes are necessary too.

[Phade102]

So, this is the updated version. I know my architecture is simple, but thats the general style that i'm going for in this wad. I'm not focusing so much on intense detail, and instead wanting the combat to be better. for example, in this room, I've left a large amount of movable space for the monsters you will face, which will consist of hell knights, a baron and Arachnatrons

 

 

 

Edited May 19, 2017 by Phade102

[Bauul]

Looks much better!  And bold, simple architecture is what Doom does best.  

 

One thought: is there going to be anything on those four SUPPORT2 pillars?  At the very least stick some ammo or health on them and make them lifts that lower when you activate them.  It'd be a nice little gameplay touch to the room.

[Phade102]

3 minutes ago, Bauul said:

Looks much better!  And bold, simple architecture is what Doom does best.  

 

One thought: is there going to be anything on those four SUPPORT2 pillars?  At the very least stick some ammo or health on them and make them lifts that lower when you activate them.  It'd be a nice little gameplay touch to the room.

Oh yes, there will be hell knights on those pillars. I just hadn't gotten to that part yet, and I didnt want them to block the view. There will be four Hell knights, and two additional arachnotrons on the ground.

[Not Jabba]

33 minutes ago, Phade102 said:

Yeah, i'm not fantastic at lighting. I am practicing, but I'll keep working on it.

Lighting isn't too bad once you get the hang of thinking about how light sources work. It's mostly about placing the sources, and then you can lay out the path of the light itself with just a bit of logic.

 

Ambient lighting should be pretty consistent. If you have outdoor areas in daylight and indoor areas without a lot of lights, then the outdoor areas will generally be brighter. If you have outdoor areas at night and indoor areas with lots of lights, then the indoor areas will be brighter. If you're doing an outdoor area in the daylight, or a room with an opening to the sky, then anything with a ceiling above it will probably be darker than anything with sky above it, because it's in the shade -- but at night, the only source of light is most likely the lighting decorations/textures that you place on the map. Indoor areas with lots of spotlights will have brighter ambient lighting than rooms with few spotlights (though an ultra-stylized room will often skip this and use extreme contrast for effect).

 

Spotlighting should most likely be either V-shaped swaths or layers of circles that get darker as you go out, depending on how you set up your light source and your personal preference about how realistic or stylized you want it to look (usually the high-contrast V-shapes are more stylized, while the rings are more realistic). If there's something in the way of your path, it blocks the light. There's not much more to it than that, in my admittedly limited experience. Lighting is one of those things that actually does a lot of the work for you -- as long as you have lighting, it will probably look pretty decent.

 

EDIT: btw, your new version of the room looks much better!

 

 

27 minutes ago, Marnetstapler said:

 

I get the impression that what most people think of as "detail" isn't actually detail at all, but rather good-practice usage of angles, architecture, texturing, lighting and color. If BTSX used IWAD textures, I imagine you'd get something that looks a lot like more like a fancy DTWID than, say, KDIZD.

True, and it definitely helps when the texture set is more detailed. Doom's textures have a lot of built-in trim and non-repetition, but with Heretic, most available textures are more basic, and I feel like I have to rely a lot more on wall trim in place of that (though all the other things you listed are still very important).

Edited May 19, 2017 by Not Jabba

[Phade102]

Thank you all, especially Not Jabba. I believe I've completed the room now, the whole map is nearly done layout wise, it'll just need monster placements and item placements, then I can try to get some people to help test. I seem to have a sort of slime trail error in one of the rooms, but i'm not entirely sure what that is or how to fix it, but i'll see how it goes.

[Memfis]

Put some corpses on the ground. Livens up any room!

[Arctangent]

16 minutes ago, Memfis said:

Put some corpses on the ground. Livens up any room!

👌

[40oz]

I didn't find your original screenshot to be too terribly bland. It seems as though you could benefit from muting the color pallete a little bit by selecting textures that are closer to the same colors. Be careful when it comes to adding detail like craters and light sources the player can collide with. You don't want your attention to detail to be the reason the player stops while trying to avoid a stream of arachnatron spit.

 

[Phade102]

14 minutes ago, 40oz said:

I didn't find your original screenshot to be too terribly bland. It seems as though you could benefit from muting the color pallete a little bit by selecting textures that are closer to the same colors. Be careful when it comes to adding detail like craters and light sources the player can collide with. You don't want your attention to detail to be the reason the player stops while trying to avoid a stream of arachnatron spit.

 

Yes, thats one major thing I try to avoid. I had at first put some trees in the grass, but it then just becomes a massive obstacle. I feel the final version has some nice detail, while giving the player plenty of space to move and avoid attacks, since there are No hitscanners in the room in question at all. I also made the rocky patches in the screenshot one level lower, so while it adds a bit of depth, it doesnt effect your movement in any way.

[Grain of Salt]

Reading the bad advice in this realm667 article is going to give me heartburn.

[Memfis]

What's bad about it?

[Empyre]

The patch of dirt needs to be a different floor height, even if it is just 2 - 4 units. You could use ZIMMER2 for the grass edge.

[Deadwing]

IMO, if a room looks too boring, I like to think that this is more than just an aesthetics problem, but a gameplay issue. The second pic looks a lot better, not only because of the additional detail, but the pillars, for example, are an interesting gameplay option, where you can add some snipers, or just keep the way it is as a cover option. In the far wall, for example, you could add some windows with snipers, or even a connection to another area of your map.

 

IMO, even with very basic decoration, an interconnected layout with lots of elements (heights difference, lighting, windows, liquids and things) helps a lot creating a more interesting environment.

[Grain of Salt]

34 minutes ago, Memfis said:

What's bad about it?

I just really don't like tormentor's style of detailing. It's hard to put my finger on, but a lot of it seems to come down to the idea that you should always detail everything. "Carpets can go anywhere", etc.

[Nine Inch Heels]

5 minutes ago, Deadwing said:

IMO, if a room looks too boring, I like to think that this is more than just an aesthetics problem, but a gameplay issue.

I have never heard this before, not that I'm around for a long time anyway, but this idea is confusing me. If we -nomo, say, SOD31 and compare it to any hell revealed II map you can possibly think of, I know which map would look better under pretty much any given circumstance. I'd be inclined to believe that good gameplay can make people look past "bland" design (which is subject to the eye of the beholder), or unaligned textures. Speaking for myself I'm playing because I want the gameplay in the first place, and having an environment that isn't entirely dreadful is nice, but I never thought of gameplay as part of the detailing, unless corpses count as such.

 

If you're trying to convey that interesting gameplay demands corresponding architecture, I'm with you so far, though I'd argue that functional architecture doesn't necessarily have to be "nice" (eye of the beholder) to look at.

[Deadwing]

28 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I have never heard this before, not that I'm around for a long time anyway, but this idea is confusing me. If we -nomo, say, SOD31 and compare it to any hell revealed II map you can possibly think of, I know which map would look better under pretty much any given circumstance. I'd be inclined to believe that good gameplay can make people look past "bland" design (which is subject to the eye of the beholder), or unaligned textures. Speaking for myself I'm playing because I want the gameplay in the first place, and having an environment that isn't entirely dreadful is nice, but I never thought of gameplay as part of the detailing, unless corpses count as such.

 

If you're trying to convey that interesting gameplay demands corresponding architecture, I'm with you so far, though I'd argue that functional architecture doesn't necessarily have to be "nice" (eye of the beholder) to look at.

 

Hmmm I said this because sometimes when you have a boring room (or area) in a level, this might be a symptom that it is actually lacking more interesting gameplay elements, which adding detail will only hide this problem. For example, the very common square room which appears on everyone's first level. You can add as much detail you want but it'll still be a square room without many interesting elements. An interesting layout can look very poor detailed but, like you said, it will be functional, still with some basic texturing and lighting you can already get some very effective results.

 

Of course, this is only my opinion, many mappers also prefer to give a more "realistic" look to their levels and/or create very robust architecture, which is fine too.

Edited May 20, 2017 by Deadwing

[Phade102]

6 hours ago, Empyre said:

The patch of dirt needs to be a different floor height, even if it is just 2 - 4 units. You could use ZIMMER2 for the grass edge.

It actually is a different height, its only one unit, so from the angle I took the screenshot it looks completely flat. It looks fine in game though, I believe personally.

[Memfis]

Actually most maps look a lot more boring in -nomo. The monsters and their corpses ARE a part of the scenery, no question about it.

[Phade102]

48 minutes ago, Memfis said:

Actually most maps look a lot more boring in -nomo. The monsters and their corpses ARE a part of the scenery, no question about it.

God I agree so much. an empty map is boring. even if I were to design a deathmatch map, i'd put some monster corpses in just for a bit of extra detail

[Not Jabba]

9 hours ago, Phade102 said:

It actually is a different height, its only one unit, so from the angle I took the screenshot it looks completely flat. It looks fine in game though, I believe personally.

It may look fine, but just fyi, it doesn't need to be this shallow. You can create height variations up to about 8 pixels deep without disrupting the player. Even a height change of 16 usually isn't a problem unless you have lots of them.

Edited May 20, 2017 by Not Jabba