Late last year I completed my first mod. It was a simple one-level .wad for Doom. I learned a lot from that experience. For one I learned that from a design perspective, bold choices usually work better then subtle ones, at least when you have only pre-made textures to work with, and for another game engine UI's function largely the same. Transitioning over from Doom Builder to Unreal Engine 4 I've noticed that how the viewport functions and general UI layout really isn't all that different.
What is of course different is the level of complexity a modern engine like UE4 can deliever, this is to no suprise. The basic geometry of creating a level however isn't massively different between the two engines. Although whilst in Doom Builder you have to worry about psuedo 3D-plains and in UE4 you of course don't. The map for Doom took around a couple months to finish and it acted as a good entry point into mapping. I'm expecting my map for UE4 to take considerably longer, not just because for the first time I can actually work with things like lighting, shadows, and various other environmental effects that an old engine like Doom Builder simply cannot offer. But also because I would like to build something far more polished in UE4. With Doom I built a singleplayer map, so taking note of health, ammo, and enemy placement was key and took an arduos amount of testing even for such a small level.
With my UT4 map I'll be needing to think about jump pads, teleports, and spawnpoints, and expect this to take just as much testing. Though without having to account for player health after defeating the first 20 out of however many monsters in a level I expect it will be less tedious. Although Unreal Tournament Forums do provide a good platform for beta-testing I'd prefer to lurk there to gain more knowledge rather then put out countless un-textured, un-playtested maps. The fact that UT4 is still in pre-alpha gives me a lot of room to work with since it's unlikely that a final version of the game will be out before 2017 by which time my map should be certainly be ready. There is also the incentive that this time around I have the ability to reach a larger user-base. With my Doom mod 'ExtraMana' I was able to reach over 2,000 views. This wasn't too bad at all considering how old the game is and how small the number of active players is realistically. With the possibility of reaching more people comes the motivation to put in more effort. This time around I'll be drafting the level geometry with thumbnails before I build the map.
