World Design Exercise: Game #1 (DOOM Map)

I was one of the many students who struggled initially with getting the hang of the Doom Builder, which was a primary factor in my designing the level to be incredibly simplistic and fairly easy to finish. I have attempted to achieve this by creating the numerous sectors of the maps in loops as well as ‘horse-shoe’ shapes.

Fig 1. A topography of the entire custom Doom Map.

The player starts off in a small ritualistic room a dead demon with only one exit, pushing the player to move forward in a linear fashion as well as introducing them to one of Doom’s basic enemy, the Imp; later on, the slightly larger circular room that follows helps introduce the player to handle multiple enemies at once.

Fig 2. In the starting room, the player is introduced to the concept of coloured keys and doors right from the beginning.

When the player continues onwards towards the central hub, they will encounter the much harder enemy, the Chaingunner, who drop his chaingun for the player to pick up (this will then be the player’s primary weapon for a good portion of the remaining level).

As previously mentioned, the next couple of sections the player will encounter will take the form of loops, that way the player will return to the central hub multiple times to take a breather before moving on to collect the next coloured key. The two curved yellow arrows shown the map above for example emphasizes the 'U' shape for two sections of the map to show how the player is able to return to the hub section of the level without needing to backtrack where they came from and to prevent repetition.

Once all of the coloured keys are collected, the player will then make move on forward towards the final ‘boss’ room, with an optional room for them to explore and collect a huge armour bonus for the final room (again, it is optional, the armour will only make the final room a much easier encounter, therefore the player is more than welcome to move on instead). In typical Doom fashion the boss level is structured as an ambush with areas where the player can hide and restock on ammo and med packs.

Fig 3. The numerous coloured doors that players are directed to unlock in order to unlock sectors and move on.

Overall the doom level itself is incredibly simple, but I have hoped that many of the fundamental level design aspects I have learned were shown in some ways, such as utilizing a looping (or ‘horse-show’) so the player will return to the hub multiple times, strategically placing items and enemies and ramping difficulty accordingly. Another aspect of the level that I wish I had executed better would be set-dressing, because while I have tried to theme sections of the map accordingly, I feel like my limited knowledge of Doom and the level builder in general hindered my process.


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(all screenshots were provided by the author of the post)