
Make a Doom level, part 1: the basics - fcambus
http://eev.ee/blog/2015/12/19/you-should-make-a-doom-level-part-1/
======
nailer
How Doom works in a nutshell:

\- Every enclosed polygon has a ceiling height and a floor height

That's it.

\- The table in the middle of the room? It's just a polygon with a higher
floor. The room around it has a comparatively lower floor.

\- A door is just a polygon with a ceiling height that matches the floor
height. When you use the door, the ceiling raises. Combined with the textures
being pinned, this makes the door seem like it's going up.

Super simple. Also: play my wad, it's awesome. I did most of the level design
on my 386, my buddy stitched them together on his 486:

Screenshots: [http://mikemaccana.com/images/work/screenshots/doom-the-
path...](http://mikemaccana.com/images/work/screenshots/doom-the-path-0.png)
[http://mikemaccana.com/images/work/screenshots/doom-the-
path...](http://mikemaccana.com/images/work/screenshots/doom-the-path-1.png)
[http://mikemaccana.com/images/work/screenshots/doom-the-
path...](http://mikemaccana.com/images/work/screenshots/doom-the-path-2.png)
[http://mikemaccana.com/images/work/screenshots/doom-the-
path...](http://mikemaccana.com/images/work/screenshots/doom-the-path-3.png)

(yes, that's a working toilet)

Download:
[https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/s-u/thepath](https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/s-u/thepath)

~~~
tdicola
Don't forget the BSP tree, that's what really made Doom work and be playable
with huge maps on a 386 & 486\. By cutting the game map into sections in front
and behind the player it could very quickly figure out a small set of sectors
that are visible and just render them instead of the entire world (which would
be way too slow on computers of the time). Fabien Sanglard has a great
analysis of how Doom worked:
[http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/doomClassicRenderer.php](http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/doomClassicRenderer.php)

~~~
viperscape
I thought bsp came in when they made quake, interesting to know! Is this how
Wolfenstien and Commander Keen worked too?

~~~
pjc50
Wolfenstein was grid-based (you couldn't have arbitary wall angles), and Keen
was a 2D side scrolling platformer.

------
chrisan
Map making in Doom was (is?) so accessible as the editors were in 2D for a 3D
world. Granted you couldn't place 1 room directly above another room, but no
one cared too much at the time. Once things moved on to Quake a lot of my
friends lost interest in trying to "figure it out" as the editor was more
challenging.

In high school a group of friends would all create their own maps and then
before classes started we would play test them on the computer lab LAN. Our
favorite editor at the time was DEU.

None of us being map making geniuses, we'd always end up with something that
didn't play well but did have a few "fun spots". Eventually someone had the
idea to just cherry pick all those fun spots and Frankenstein together a
single map using our individual parts. This map ended up being the most fun we
have ever had in Doom.

I'm not sure if Doom was the first, but it was the first for me to instill the
idea that a game should be moddable if you want to make a great community and
give the game a very long life after the developers have moved on to the next
thing.

~~~
eropple
_> Once things moved on to Quake a lot of my friends lost interest in trying
to "figure it out" as the editor was more challenging._

Moving to constructive solid geometry (CSG) map editing was really hard for a
lot of people, myself included. I ended up learning on _Dark Forces 2: Jedi
Knight_ , which was subtractive and a lot more like how Doom felt to me.

~~~
moogly
I spent many years building levels for Doom/Build engine games, and I also had
trouble moving to the void-space model of the Quake engines. Unreal, with its
subtractive CSG model, was the next step for me, and felt so _right_ in
comparison.

------
unixhero
A childhood friend of mine(32) from elementary school, has a mild autism and
does not know how to deal with his life. We used to be mad doom fans (well, we
still are) when it came out and it stuck with us for years. But the poor guy
is living with his family, sitting up until 4AM making Doom levels. At this
stage he is one of the leading "levellers" at Doomworld[0]. "STILL MAKING
LEVELS IN 2015" is a thing which is kind of funny, but it is actually sad.
He's wasted so much of his young years thinking about Doom, making levels etc.
I wish he'd just snap out of it, but it seems it will not happen. That is how
the story goes I guess, with the kids you grow up with. Not all of them have
the interpersonal and mental means to pick a chose a good path for themselves.

[0] [http://doomworld.com](http://doomworld.com)

~~~
jmnicolas
YOU are sad but what about him ? He might be the happiest guy in the world.

~~~
antod
He probably is happy, but when I read that I'm sad for his parents. Especially
when I think of them in another 10 or more years. And then a bit later I
realise (selfishly?) there's more to it than empathy towards some strangers
I've only just heard of, as it could be my own reality in another 20 years.

------
unicornporn
OMG, this _was_ my childhood. So sad I decided to throw away the levels I had
saved on floppy disks. Some of them I think were quite impressive.

If I recall things right my editor was a DOS program simply named "Doom
Editor". Can't seem to find any info on it though...
[http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_Editing_Utilities](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_Editing_Utilities)

------
rangibaby
Note that this tutorial will make a map that only works with ZDoom, not the
original .exe. Having said that, mapping for Doom is fun and I suggest you try
it!

------
brudgers
Haslam's Book Store's _Books of Doom_ :
[http://www.haslams.com/doom.shtml](http://www.haslams.com/doom.shtml)

------
morganvachon
Skimming through the article, it seems like it was so much easier and faster
making a level in DEU back in the day (1994/95). It was more or less like the
CAD software I was using in my senior year in high school at the time. By
contrast, this seems almost counter-intuitive.

Then again, the difficulty in getting DEU to run on modern OSes might be an
even greater challenge than learning a new, awkward tool.

------
liotier
Wow - the WAD editors have come a long way since 1995 - and I guess that with
contemporary computing power, one doesn't have to wait a few minutes while the
level renders, only to find a stupid bug to fix and render again... Which
reminds me about all the quirks of Doom's 2.5D mode that the article doesn't
get into - for example, put a texture on the wrong side of a wall an you'll
get ugly artefacts... Lots of those gotchas to watch for... Oh the
nostalgia... Doom levels have been my biggest foray in game content creation -
I did the 2.5D modeling and three business school friends handled sound, music
and texturing... Borrowing school hardware and organizing a 250-people
tournament of two-people teams (Doom's IPX multiplayer allowed only four
players) was a highlight of those times !

------
Zardoz84
Ahh, ther is is a lot of beauty level design on doom maps. I saw a lot of
tricks like creating fake deep water, fake bridges, or simply playing with
lighthing to create a deeper scene.

The only other game that I found that reach this level of simplicity and
powerfull level making, are the old good Unreal Tournamet, and the Unreal
Tournament 2004. It's like levels for DooM but is real 3d, thanks to
substractive booleans.

------
LeonM
Oh man this takes me back... I used to build maps for Doom, Unreal, Quake and
Half Life. I still play one of my HL maps with a couple of friends, it's just
so much fun! Back then QuArK was my tool of choice, it seems they are still
releasing new versions of it! [0]

I guess I know what I'm going to do this holiday :D

[0] [http://quark.sourceforge.net/](http://quark.sourceforge.net/)

~~~
Zardoz84
I did a few stuff on DooM and on Unreal Tournament. Even I found a path to
convert maps from DooM to Unreal Tournament ->
[http://www.moddb.com/games/unreal-
tournament/tutorials/how-c...](http://www.moddb.com/games/unreal-
tournament/tutorials/how-convert-a-doom-map-to-ut)

And this piece of crap, was how I got a email from ID software :
[http://www.moddb.com/mods/unreal-doom](http://www.moddb.com/mods/unreal-doom)

------
Cheyana
I just spent the last couple of nights watching Doom II playthroughs on
Youtube and now this shows up on HN. Sweet!

I still have the (unfinished) wad I created back in the late 90s using WADED
from the Tricks of the Doom Programming Gurus. Barely rescued it from a floppy
disk over a decade ago that reported the file size as over a gig. Now that I
think about it, I hope the CD I recorded to is still good.

------
neppo
btw doom 4 is coming 2016:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVaWl1GtDHU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVaWl1GtDHU)

