Hi

A browser version of Heretic rekindled my interest in DooM engine FPS games. I started reading DooM wiki on wikia, and read about Oblige. It's a random level generator for DooM, Heretic, Quake and Hexen*. It produces quite nice results - nothing comparable to handcrafted WADs, but very playable (if somewhat repetitive). DooM generator is especially polished right now.

For a sample, I recommend this DooM2 WAD I generated:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/s15kjb
(generated for DooM2 and Doomsday Engine source port which I use, but probably compatible with other source ports)

One way to use the generator is to just have fun. But you can use it to speed up map creation: randomly generate some levels, take nicest of them, and modify by hand to make them more interesting and prettier. That would be the best of two worlds. I hear you have problems recruiting talented mappers, and/or ones you have are overworked. You should be interested. Oblige homepage is here: http://oblige.sourceforge.net/

By the way, what's your favourite level editor for DooM engine games ? Years ago I used Deu II, but perhaps there are newer, better tools ?

*Note that HeXen support seems to be currently disabled, but considering the generator is under active development (!) it shouldn't take long.

Thanks for this information, it's very interesting!
The only program I knew that could do the same thing was SLIGE: http://www.doomworld.com/slige/
I did not expect another level generator to be created for these old games. Nice!