When/how did you get into level design?

Oh wow, great question.

My first serious level designs were in Doom, using DEU, I think downloaded from a BBS. The whole concept of designing your own levels was mind-blowing at the time.

But my first ever exposure to the concept might have been Excitebike on the NES. It had a "create your own course" feature which I remember.

I started with the custom level editor in Lode Runner: The Legend Returns. I also spawned monsters and objects in Doom 3 while noclipping before going back to the start to play the map again with all my extra additions.

There was an old does game called jetpack that came with a built in level editor and I was obsessed with it. I must have made a new map or two a day when I was a kid. I had over a hundred of them before I moved on from that game.

Then I picked up a freeware game called Meteor, which is this top-down view military shooter. I made like a hundred plus maps for that too.

I discovered doom map editing through doomworld. Before I registered an account there, I'd unplug the phone to connect via dialup every few days to check if there was a new newstuff chronicles, and I'd just observe every screenshot and tease myself by imagining what it was like to play those new doom maps. I didn't even know how to run wads before I downloaded doom builder the first time. I tried making a city level because I always wanted a nicer city level like MAP13 Downtown but I don't remember ever figuring out how to play the map I made. I downloaded the shareware IWAD and opened that with the editor to give the IWAD levels a new paint job, mostly with more computers and and silver SHAWN textures and blood splat sectors around the corpses. At tthe time this was the only way I knew how to test what I made.

I later discovered ZDoom and that you could switch to deathmatch mode from the console. It also came with ZCajun bots, so I got hooked on making deathmatch maps for me to kill the bots in. The bots were so easy but I didn't care I was obsessed with deathmatch. Using z Doom I did eventually find out how to make maps and play them in Doom 2. I moved on to playing Doom 2 megawads, and practiced imitating my favorite levels in the level editor. I would also look at screenshots of famous mappers work at the time, like Tormentor667 and AgentSpork and try to imitate the detail and attention to texture alignment they put in their map designs.

It took me a few years to release my first map. It was far lower in scale and expectations than anything I had planned on before. I had ideas for TCs and megawads and utilized new texture packs and all, but none of those projects ever got finished. I knew I wanted to show some people what I could do so I just told myself to release something so I made a single short doom map with probably not enough ammo, and some monsters that were stuck together in the final fight. But some people liked it and it didn't require too much effort on my part so I just made a few more before moving on to bigger things.

To this day I can't stop making levels. I really like the style I've developed for myself and people seem to like it too.

I want to see this Ernest World.

Oh yeah I used to play a Mario fan game with a level editor called Super Mario Forever which I am sure was responsible for a few viruses back when. I tried mixing Metal Slug and Mario together in that editor through the power of imagination.

He posted a screenshot in the Random 2 thread. Looks nice.