CHAPTER 1 : The Art of High Detail
First at all, detail has always to do with lots of effort. Don't think that after this article, you will be able to build a supreme-eye-candy map in just 2 or 3 days (as I did in Torment & Torture ;)). Also if you have some of these tricks in your mind, the developement of your maps will still take weeks and months, it's likely that they will take even more time then ever before, but believe me, the results will speak on their own!

Beware! Detailing is a powerful tool to improve your maps' visuals; but detailing alone is not enough to make a map aesthetically pleasing; done tastelessly it will instead detract from your map. You should also remember to avoid making the map details hinder gameplay: avoid tiny protrusions that can block movement, do not overdo floor detailing that causes the view to bob up and down. Maps misusing this detailing guide collectively earned the Worst Wad 2009 Cacoward.

In this part of the article, I will show you some of the editing standards, I use in my maps to achieve a high sector/linedef/vertice count and thus a high level of detail.

At the beginning you have to know, that everywhere, where you just have a plain wall, a plain room, a plain floor or ceiling or a plain scenery at all, there is a lot of space for detail and that's a big problem, new mappers have: Many areas in their maps - whether it is a indoor arena or an outdoor scenery - seem empty, without any effort put in because they mostly consist of 1 - 5 sectors. Often this has nothing to do with lazyness, it's just a lack of knowledge. New mappers don't know how to fill their rooms with detail, because they don't have enough experience with what can be done. But with a few easy steps, you can do sth. about it, just take a look at the following possibilites: