"Doom mapping is often called simple because it's just like drawing a map on a piece of paper. Quake mapping, on the other hand, is a lot like building with Lego."
Thread on an interesting new (still in development) way of building Doom maps:
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/103999-announcing-bsp2doom-build-doom-levels-with-a-quake-editorThis tension between models is partly why some of my ideas for a truly powerful engine-agnostic level editor are still not as concrete as I'd like: ideally you want to be able to flip effortlessly between paper map and lego, making the ortho views truly useful for creating *and* revising, but keeping the perspective views powerful enough you can spend most of your time there during eg a detailing stage. Very possible, but AFAIK nobody has grappled with these questions in a broadly useful way.
Finding a lot of my thoughts about level design lately aren't much about building games at all, but about untapped meanings of simulated 3D/2D space to concepts of community.
"Virtual worlds" were this 90s-flavored approach that rode the wave of the internet's commercialization. What does it mean in 2019 to hang out with people in a 3D space? Fortnite has famously become the new mall, with all the attendant top-down corporate control. I'm most interested in alternatives built entirely by users.
JP