SuperWAD 05 BETA (WIP) completed.

So here is the Beta Version of level 5. Please let me know how it is, should be fairly difficult.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B35tkPob3f1WX2VncXJkT21DU1U/edit?usp=sharing

First four levels OP.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/66720-superwad-lvl-3-needs-testing/

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

So I've played all your levels except Map 04 (not sure why I didn't play that one yet) but I've rarely had the time to comment much on them. But I just finished with this one, so it's fresh in my mind.

A fun level overall, not too hard but with an escalating difficulty and plenty of things to spam your BFG at. Kind of a "slaughter-lite" map in places. The only section I found particularly challenging was the area that was red bricks and had a long drop at the start. The arena with the invuln teleports was fairly simple though I died once or twice figuring out the best way to get through it; taking the south(?) teleporter led you into a separate room which was a good vantage point for fighting everything else.

Problems/things I didn't like, in no particular order:

• In general a lot of the encounters can be beaten by running away a bit and then just spamming rockets or BFG shots down a hallway. You are rarely forced to deal with enemies from more than one direction and this makes it a bit easy, not to mention kind of boring.
  
• Skull switches as normal textures. You can get away with the gargoyle switches I guess, but I find other switches as normal textures pretty annoying. I think most people would agree with me.
  
• http://imgur.com/logAyHq - some cacodemons never got released. Looking at the map in DoomBuilder it looks like the doors don't have tags at all.
  
• Getting a SSG at the start of the level and then having almost no shells was a bit misleading. There were times when the SSG definitely would have come in handy.
  
• Stacking so many supplies on top of each other is also kind of misleading/annoying since you can't really gauge how many are left. Though it's not a huge problem here since there's so much ammo most of the time.

And the other maps...

Map 03:

• I remember this map as being quite easy. I think you could do away with most or all of the invulnerabilities on UV, they're really not so necessary.
  
• http://imgur.com/3Nvo2m8 - this particular texture alignment thing caught my eye. You've got texture issues here and there on all the levels, nothing worse than in the Iwads though :P
  
• http://imgur.com/TLkCz50 - I got stuck behind here I think.
  
• http://imgur.com/tUB2G02 - hard to see from the screenshot but there's some funny flat bleeding going on here.

Map 1 I liked in general, had some problems with Arachnotrons that didn't get released.

Map 2 I didn't like too much, I remember a lot of monotonous marble hallways and an absolutely impossible lava maze. I only beat it with liberal use of IDBEHOLDR and even then it wasn't too easy because of radsuit leakage and lots of close-quarters fighting.


Are you going for a megawad? It's going to be pretty huge if the levels all stay this size.

Hey man,

First and foremost, thank you again for playing these levels for me. I lost my regular play tester so it's hard to tel as OP sometimes if the levels are passable or what nuances can be corrected, modified or whatever.

So yeah, on this last level I kinda dropped enough rockets, health and energy cells to get through the level and figured to modify the monster encounters first as theres a lot of open room for trickery still. I noticed the same problem with being able to back up and spam BFG/Rockets but there are certain sections where I'd like that to be maintained.

Since I hit this level I am going to take a bit of time to go back to my first few levels and touch them up a bit as when I first started on them I was using DeePSEA and a lot of the linedef/texture mapping wasnt done correctly and is much easier to fix (now that I know wtf the problems are) so a lot of those previous issues, especially level 2 will be modified to make them less monotonous. Since I acquired Doombuilder 2.0 there has been a stark improvement on the quality of the maps I am able to craft and I see a lot of previous errors for aesthetics and gameplay that id like to fix...

Also, to answer your question; yes. I am going to be continuing on to create my own MegaWAD. It's been a pipe dream of mine since being a young lad to entirely replace all of the 32 maps in Doom 2 with my own custom set. The idea I always had was sort of a frontal assault on the gates of hell and these first five levels (and continuing) will be reflecting certain aspects of mythology and history. Ideally I'll write out a story as I finish, maybe add some storylining crap to the game but I really want to leave it pretty vanilla Doom 2 as it is pretty much my ideal version.

Now time to drink heavily and map.

Destroylio said:

First and foremost, thank you again for playing these levels for me. I lost my regular play tester so it's hard to tel as OP sometimes if the levels are passable or what nuances can be corrected, modified or whatever.

Welcome. I'll try to make it to the rest as they're posted, hopefully with a bit more prompt feedback. No promises though! Some days I have lots of time for Doom, other days less so.

Looking over my previous post it looks like mostly "constructive criticism" so I feel like I should make it clear that I am enjoying them. Even Map 2 had some fun moments when I wasn't melting in lava or wandering endless corridors, I remember a fun cyberdemon fight at least. They feel kind of amateurish in places, but there's also a certain enjoyable looseness to them where you can run around and shoot a lot without it being too hard, or too easy, and they've got some decent visuals most of the time.

I noticed the same problem with being able to back up and spam BFG/Rockets but there are certain sections where I'd like that to be maintained.

Yeah it's not the worst thing to have some sections like that, as long as you're aware that it happens a lot. But there are definitely parts where, even if the monsters were coming at you from two nearby hallways, it would be more exciting.

Since I hit this level I am going to take a bit of time to go back to my first few levels and touch them up a bit [...] Since I acquired Doombuilder 2.0 there has been a stark improvement on the quality of the maps I am able to craft and I see a lot of previous errors for aesthetics and gameplay that id like to fix...

Understandable. I'd caution against doing too much revision right now though, as I'm sure that by the time you get another 20 levels under your belt you'll know even more about map design and want to fix them up a bit more.

Anyhow I just played Map 4, found it considerably harder than the others. I'm sure playing continuously would ease that a bit as you'd have a lot of supplies and a BFG already, but there were much more ambushes, traps, and generally harder situations. A few really dickish crushers even. It was a nice change, I don't think they all need to be like this but it's good to shake things up sometime.