My first doom wad

ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pc/games/idgames/newstuff/moretest.zip

Here is my first doom2,wad so please tell if there is any problems with it.
And also play it in zdoom, it makes it look pretty.

Hey there,

I don't know if you're looking for first run demos but I recorded one, here you go: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3s2v4d0wc4nru9p/moretest_FRUN.lmp

My thoughts:

I really can't tell if this was a serious attempt considering what I've read about the proliferation of joke wads in this community, but uh. . . Without commenting on things like tedious monster placement, an over abundance of powerful weapons and a lack of any kind of gameplay value, I'm really, really, really curious why this wad is 6 megs for one level and a hand full of textures.

I had 10 minutes to spare today, but I can only hope I can get them back doing something meaningful. . . Maybe setting fire to an orphanage or something, surely that will absolve me of the sin of gazing upon this map.

All that said, here's what I enjoyed and how (if you're actually making an attempt at making a real map. . .) you might want to consider approaching your next project:

Minimize your resource usage. Please, do us all a favour, there's no reason for a 6 meg download for this map. None whatsoever.

Add borders to do things like your doors so they don't look like badly tiled. The use of distinct textures was good in that it gave you a visual identifier that this was how to continue, but a little framing would really help.

Visual (linedef) detail is not your enemy. Things like height variation, light variation and even a couple windows wouldn't go amiss.

Consider some angles that make sense. I understand what you were trying to accomplish with the automap and it looks pretty neat, but if you wanted to add some verisimilitude, maybe a few harder lines and mechanical (if doing a base) or natural lines (if doing something organic) would break it up and make it more palpable.

Like I said, I'm not sure you're being at all serious, so I have to take this map with a grain of salt, but I hope you'll post something else in the future.

-Tam

Not sure if you intended for me to completely run out of ammo near the end (sort of turned into crowd surfing near the end)

I have to say I thought that "Over Here Man" texture was pretty funny; no ammo, monsters coming, switch doesn't work.... quick what's on the other side?

I don't know why that skybox texture is in there, I don't think there was sky in any part of the map; that would have cut about 3 MB off of the download.

I think you should pick one art style and stick with it, if you want to do some sort of mspainty / solid color texture set, don't put doom textures in it, it just doesn't work.

I think you should try to make your fights more interesting in general, I don't mind a bit of wolf3d like "shooting down hallways at monsters walking at me" combat, but this map has way too much of it; add some surprises and tricks.

I think that imp / invul sphere room isn't a bad concept and might be interesting if you developed it more and built it around the player having a definite time limit to make a safe area for themselves and prepare for when the effect would wear off.

Hey, I played this. To be frank, it isn't a good level. However you do manage to do a few things well with it. I think it's an entirely serious wad, but it's also very much a "my first map" kind of wad. And since it is in fact your first map, that's excusable.

Let's start with the bad:

• Your level is basically flat. There was a small crack in the floor at one point, and some doors and switches, but that's about it.
  
• The map is extremely linear, it's really just one long winding hallway broken up by doors.
  
• The new textures look pretty bad, and the texture use in general is plain and ugly.
  
• The architecture doesn't match the textures at all. I'm talking about stuff like doors where the texture repeats one and a half times before getting cut off.
  
• Extremely lacking in detail. You've basically got empty rooms with enemies in them.
  
• A lot of very straightforward gameplay: open a door, shoot the enemies in the room, move on.
  
• Bloated filesize, like people said. Though really 6 MB isn't like a big file nowadays. Still you should avoid including resources that you don't use at all, where possible.

Now that's not meant to be harsh or off-putting, it's just a list of things to keep in mind for the future. If you look at other maps, even of doom2.wad, in DoomBuilder you can see how they use height variations a lot, interesting shapes, detail variations, etc.

Here's what was good:

• Surprisingly good ammo and health balance. A lot of new mappers tend to go to one extreme or the other, by giving you way more supplies than you need, or hardly any. It feels like you actually playtested this level a bit, which is a good sign.
  
• Similarly there's a good balance of monsters, you have a lot of them in there (almost 300!) and yet nothing is unmanageable. Again, new mappers often go to one of two extremes, having like two imps per room or going "lol here's 50 cyberdemons" and you avoided both these mistakes.
  
• While most of the encounters were bland, there were a few promising ones. The archvile setup was pretty good, the invul sphere fight wasn't bad, and the end with a whole lot of zombiemen to kill was a nice way to finish the map.
  
• Your textures didn't add much, but you got them into the map at least, which is a decent technical achievement.
  
• "Over here man" end switch was quite funny.

Anyhow, keep at it, having a map that works at all is a good first step. I think if you try to pay attention to what makes other levels look good and play well, and try to emulate that a bit, you'll be making some nice maps soon.

Well the whole point of the map was to set the player in a unrealistic world of alternative reality of pain and suffering and also for the player to go and open this wad on doom builder and they will notice the reason why their are so much former humans because it makes a message.

The other reason why their are so much monsters and not enough ammo and healthpacks lieing around because I don't want to baby you so should save on your ammo with the chain-gun.

The reason their was no skybox because I have no idea how to make a skybox.Like really how do you do it?

and reason why its 6 mb (even know its really not that much) is I had some unused textures.

But I know its going to be a hard and painful journey before I can do
this...

this project I want to do.

ps.how do you run demos T_Silverwolf? I would really love to see how you got though moretest.wad.

Escape your what? Sorry, can't make out the last word.

cq75 said:

I don't know why that skybox texture is in there, I don't think there was sky in any part of the map; that would have cut about 3 MB off of the download.

Twice as that, actually. That giant texture is repeated in the wad.

it says escape your mind Great Arrow font doesn't make 'I's look so good

From within zdoom, drop the console (tilde key ~) and type playdemo (demoname).lmp

I got couldn't read file MORETEST_FRUN.IMP

use L .lmp as in lump ^_^

I can tell that you are brand new to mapping lol But it is good to see new mappers in the community ^__^

Your map has WAY too many sharp edges and texture offsets. I'm really not digging the custom textures because they just seem weird and out of place. The thing placement is really out-of-whack.

For one thing, I recommend that you download a lot of wads from the idgames database. You will become a better map designer over time just by observing them from playing and through whatever editor you use to make maps. I assume you use either Doombuilder 2 or GZDoombuilder?

There are also good tutorials of Doom editors (such as Doombuilder/GZDoombuilder) on youtube.

Your map is very reminiscent to most newbie maps (my maps were the same way back when I started in late 2011).

Aside from the how to use Doom editors on youtube, I wish the Doom community had a forum section designated to giving lessons to new mappers. New mappers should learn how to make sectors with nice detailing. They should also learn the dos and don'ts of thing placement/texture usage.

I hope my advice will guide you along the way :)

xbobby64 said:
Well the whole point of the map was to set the player in a unrealistic world of alternative reality of pain and suffering

That's a cool concept, though to be frank your tie dye, mspaint bricks, and solid color textures don't really fit the mood, it looks more like some sort of 8 bit acid trip (which is something I'd also like to see, heh).

xbobby64 said
also for the player to go and open this wad on doom builder and they will notice the reason why their are so much former humans because it makes a message.

if you make this a big wad it's highly unlikely people will open every map in DB, save DB-only messages for the most obscure of easter eggs because I doubt many people will see it

The main reason why I didn't see the message in the map was because I didn't need to use the automap, I didn't need to use the automap because the map was a straight line from start to finish.

I'd say only put messages in maps that are rather complicated (makes it more likely people will see them during normal gameplay since they're in the automap anyway to see where they are). Also you may want to put a computer area map in a map like that so that only when you get it you see the secret message. Sort of just throwing out ideas there.

xbobby64 said
The other reason why their are so much monsters and not enough ammo and healthpacks lieing around because I don't want to baby you so should save on your ammo with the chain-gun.

I personally like wads that make me conserve ammo, I'd say keep going in that direction. I wasn't complaining about running out.

xbobby64
The reason their was no skybox because I have no idea how to make a skybox.Like really how do you do it?

There's a few ways to do it, but I'm going to go with the simplest way.

First, rename your sky in the wad to RSKY1

Second, in the map, set the ceiling texture to a special flat called "F_SKY1" in sectors you want to have a sky. In the editor you'll see a lame flat, but when you launch the game you'll notice that the ceiling is now open air.


After that, try playing with linedef action 9 if you're using (Doom in Hexen) format, or if you're in (Doom in Doom) format you'll have to lower down the ceiling of a sector that has F_SKY1 as a ceiling to get something similar; if you're not sure what I mean look at the chainsaw porch area in Doom 2 MAP01 in Doombuilder

cq75 said:

First, rename your sky in the wad to RSKY1

Will work with a 256x128 patch in Doom picture format. Will not work with a 1920x1080 PNG image.

Da Werecat said:

Will work with a 256x128 patch in Doom picture format. Will not work with a 1920x1080 PNG image.

whoops, sorry

you're right, the size isn't handled well

png format isn't a problem in zdoom, though.

cq75 said:

Also you may want to put a computer area map in a map like that so that only when you get it you see the secret message. Sort of just throwing out ideas there.

I did

It's in the 'R' part of the wad.

doomguy93 said:

Aside from the how to use Doom editors on youtube, I wish the Doom community had a forum section designated to giving lessons to new mappers. New mappers should learn how to make sectors with nice detailing. They should also learn the dos and don'ts of thing placement/texture usage.

That would be pretty awesome to get lessons from experience doom mappers
and to give us tips and tricks about the proper and professional ways of
making a map.