Into the Depths

Just made a new map, first time mapping in a while as I keep losing my damn hard drives. Anyways, tell me what you guys think!
Pros and cons alike, also i'm going for a vanilla-esque feel to the map and will be making more to try and fill out a small mapped vanilla themed hell megawad.
I made it in Doom in Hexen format, and have been using GZDOOM with it so if the other source ports work for it that is awesome, if not i'm sorry, i'll try to fix it.
Also, if anyone could tell me how to add level 2 so it starts right after this one and it all loads in one .wad that would be awesome.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lrxouy8yird1mxb/Into%20the%20Depths.wad
PS: Will post screenshots tomorrow.

If you're using Doom Builder 2, you can start a new map, make sure you change the level name to MAP02 in the window prompt, then "Save Map Into..." your current wad.

Ah ok that makes a little more sense, So do I have to rename the first map map 1?

Your map already is MAP01. We're not talking about file name, but the map name, which you type in a prompt when starting new map in an editor. MAP01, MAP02 etc.

Start a new map, type MAP02 in the name prompt, and then save it into the same file where your MAP01 is. Just make sure that when saving the second map, you use the Save Map Into feature, not just Save, because Save would overwrite the whole old file and delete your first map.

By the way I'm playing the map, and have mixed feelings so far, I'll write you some feedback later.

Not bad for a first map, very 94-ish but also charming. Btw i found some bugs here and there (click the hyper-links to see):

- this door is misaligned, also the doors on entrance are too slow for me...

- I don't like at all this door texturing. Made it a 64-wide unit with that texture, or reset the offsets. I like the style of 94 tribute maps, but don't exaggerate too much with "bad taste" puns.

- Align these walls. I was thinking of telling you to align this staircase but the effect is pretty cool.

- WTF is this HOM room? And why i can't reach that box of shells?

Well, as I see it, design of this map has problems. One of them is that the map is extremely boxy. That's not a good thing to happen. I mean: The most common shape is a rectangle, or a simple convex room at best, but nothing much better. Rectangles and 90-degree angles are literally everywhere. In addition, the map is flat, all fights take place on a flat ground.

Ammo and health count itself is balanced tightly, but it's enough - but ammo and health distribution needs improving, IMO. It's uneven. Most health are provided in occasional powerups, and in the meantime, player faces many zealous hitscanners. Evenly distributed small pickups would be better. Regarding ammo, there were moments where I ran out of it, even though I've found secrets - so an increased amount of small pickups placed around the map would be nice, too.

You should also realize that player might be annoyed by long-lasting fights, mainly against Barons. Experienced players no longer finds shooting to be fun in infinite amount, no, the time spent to fighting should be reasonable. I've ran away in a couple moments, when I didn't want to spend time killing monsters (it was in the big courtyard). I'd personally replace all Barons in the map by Hell Knights, for the sake of more comfortable combat, and also reduce the amount of monsters in the courtyard.

Judging the map for what it is, it's not impressive, but not bad. Overally I recommend to improve level desing by employing more height variation, light variation, interconnection of areas, unorthogonal angles, structural detail, nicer texturing... Ideally, don't do this all just for the sake of detail and visuals, but with regards to playability. For example, using height variation the right way (ledges with monsters, staircases, lifts, various height differences) can lead to much more interesting fights, than Wolfenstein3D-like "chessboard" gameplay on a flat ground. Also, get to the habit of giving borders to doors, it looks far better. And use bland orthogonal corridors (and rooms) as little as possible. That's what I can recommend. Definitely keep mapping. :)

scifista42 said:

You should also realize that player might be annoyed by long-lasting fights, mainly against Barons. Experienced players no longer finds shooting to be fun in infinite amount, no, the time spent to fighting should be reasonable.

A good general rule is that the longer the fight takes the more threatening it needs to be to keep the player's attention.

walter confalonieri said:

Not bad for a first map, very 94-ish but also charming. Btw i found some bugs here and there (click the hyper-links to see):

- this door is misaligned, also the doors on entrance are too slow for me...

- I don't like at all this door texturing. Made it a 64-wide unit with that texture, or reset the offsets. I like the style of 94 tribute maps, but don't exaggerate too much with "bad taste" puns.

- Align these walls. I was thinking of telling you to align this staircase but the effect is pretty cool.

- WTF is this HOM room? And why i can't reach that box of shells?

Spoiler

- Needs few more ammo in the last battle with barons, box of ammo or box of shells choose you. Also i liked the script work in this one.

I can fix the speed of the first door, I had it slowed down so you had to kill the enemies before it opened but it still feels too slow, as for the misaligned textures and the HOM room thing, I have no idea why that is happening, as it's not happening on my copy, i'll look into it and see if something is wrong with it. If it makes any corelation, i'm using the latest edition of GZDOOM developer build.
But that's very odd, the HOM is supposed to be the portrait of hitler, and that one room with green next to the doors, there isn't green next to the doors. o.o So i'll take a look. :)

scifista42 said:

Well, as I see it, design of this map has problems. One of them is that the map is extremely boxy. That's not a good thing to happen. I mean: The most common shape is a rectangle, or a simple convex room at best, but nothing much better. Rectangles and 90-degree angles are literally everywhere. In addition, the map is flat, all fights take place on a flat ground.

Ammo and health count itself is balanced tightly, but it's enough - but ammo and health distribution needs improving, IMO. It's uneven. Most health are provided in occasional powerups, and in the meantime, player faces many zealous hitscanners. Evenly distributed small pickups would be better. Regarding ammo, there were moments where I ran out of it, even though I've found secrets - so an increased amount of small pickups placed around the map would be nice, too.

You should also realize that player might be annoyed by long-lasting fights, mainly against Barons. Experienced players no longer finds shooting to be fun in infinite amount, no, the time spent to fighting should be reasonable. I've ran away in a couple moments, when I didn't want to spend time killing monsters (it was in the big courtyard). I'd personally replace all Barons in the map by Hell Knights, for the sake of more comfortable combat, and also reduce the amount of monsters in the courtyard.

Judging the map for what it is, it's not impressive, but not bad. Overally I recommend to improve level desing by employing more height variation, light variation, interconnection of areas, unorthogonal angles, structural detail, nicer texturing... Ideally, don't do this all just for the sake of detail and visuals, but with regards to playability. For example, using height variation the right way (ledges with monsters, staircases, lifts, various height differences) can lead to much more interesting fights, than Wolfenstein3D-like "chessboard" gameplay on a flat ground. Also, get to the habit of giving borders to doors, it looks far better. And use bland orthogonal corridors (and rooms) as little as possible. That's what I can recommend. Definitely keep mapping. :)

Alright I will definitely keep that in mind! As for the boxyness, that's only the first map, since it's a building, the next set of maps won't be like that at all, as they will be taking place in hell. :)
As for the height variant, i'm still getting used to all that so i'll definetely make an effort to include more of that, it's one of the main things I want to work on getting better with. :)
As for the pickups, I definetly agree, I had a couple more ammo and health pickups laying around, but decided to take some out as some players like playing Doom **********ly hard, but i'm having issues keeping ammo, so i'll hop on and throw some more into it.
All in all, thank you for the reply! It's definetly helping! I'll release the next set of maps when I finish a couple more maps and hopefully I improve on what I need too!

walter confalonieri said:

- WTF is this HOM room? And why i can't reach that box of shells?

Hmm, works correctly for me in stable ZDoom as well as one of the latest dev versions of GZDoom (don't have more ZDoom-compatible ports to test for).