These are for people just starting out with a Doom II editor. They work no matter which editor you use, because they're about Doom, not the editor. If you've been mapping longer than me you already know all this, go play Hell Revealed or something.

1. Give every wall all its textures.
When two sectors have different floor or ceiling heights, the line between them needs an upper texture, a lower texture, or both. If you forget, you get that smeary hall-of-mirrors effect where the screen just repeats itself. It's the number one thing wrong with first maps, including mine (see WESHOUSE, or actually don't).

2. Door tracks get "lower unpegged."
The little strips on the sides of a doorway should have the lower unpegged flag set. Otherwise the track texture slides up with the door and looks wrong. The door face itself doesn't need it.

3. Tags have to match.
A switch or a walk-over line does something to whatever sector has the same tag number. If your switch does nothing, 90% of the time the tag on the line and the tag on the sector are different. The other 10% you picked the wrong line type. Write your tags down on your graph paper.

4. Watch out for big open areas.
Plain doom2.exe can only handle so many different floor and ceiling surfaces on the screen at once. Go over and it crashes with a visplane overflow. Big outdoor areas with lots of little height changes and different lighting are the worst. Keep your wide-open spaces simple, and test them by walking around and looking in every direction.

5. Use the skill settings.
Every monster and item has checkboxes for easy, medium and hard. Put fewer monsters on easy and more ammo. It's like ten extra minutes of work and suddenly your little brother can play your map and your friend who plays on Ultra-Violence doesn't get bored.

6. Don't forget the starts.
You need a Player 1 start, or Doom has nowhere to put you and the map just won't work. If you want people to deathmatch on it, you need at least four deathmatch starts, and put them far apart so nobody spawns in front of a rocket.

7. Not everything needs a key.
Three key doors in a row is not a puzzle, it's a chore. Every locked door should make the player go somewhere cool to get the key.

8. Light is free.
Changing a sector's light level doesn't cost anything and it makes more difference than any texture. Dark hallway, bright room, flickering light by the exit. Look at COLDSTOR on the levels page for what happens when you get obsessed with this.

9. Play other people's maps.
Every time I play a good megawad I learn something. Every time I play a bad one I learn more.

10. Back up.
Keep a copy of your WAD on a floppy. I lost half of the first version of FOUNDRY when the computer froze during a save, and the half I lost was the good half.

Questions? [email protected]. I'm not an expert, I've just made a lot of mistakes. Last updated Friday, September 24, 1999.