First episode of my Megawad.

Hey, I'm new to the community. I'm busy on an Ultimate Doom Megawad and I'm planning on making About 4 or 5 Megawads for Doom II and A couple for Heretic. I don't know though, depends on if I like my work or not. But that's not important right now, I was just saying that plug in shit for some hope in respect. What is important is that after about a week I have finished my first episode of the Ultimate Doom Megawad and I'm posting it here cause i'd like some feedback on my work so far! Please be critical as possible because I fucking love Doom so goddamn much and would like to make only quality maps for this shit.

The wad has some custom stuff in it, so tell me if it all comes out okay when you play it. I have GZDoom and it all works when I play it but who knows, stupid errors like " expected { but got : " happen on different computers.

This should be obvious but I'll put it in here, please only play the Phobos episode for just right now.

Okay bye, here's the link.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/2o1n5hu0fvwinqd/Blah.wad

I don't like this filesharing site, it wants me to log in via facebook or something in order to download this.

could you please reupload it somewhere nicer, like mediafire or sendspace?

You should upload it to a site where I don't need to register or login with a social media site to download it.

Okay I changed the link.

P.S.

-There are secrets, I just couldn't get them to work right, sorry.
-All levels can be completed from pistol start.
-I made the maps in UDMF Format.

Took a quick spin through the first few levels. They're not the worst I've ever played, but it's still very clearly the work of someone just starting out. There's lots of amateur mistakes like incorrect alignment of textures under windows, lack of lower unpegging on door sides, etc. Larger issues would be that generally the levels are just a bunch of rectangles, and you've strewn all sorts of custom monsters and weapons a bit haphazardly without really feeling like it was tightly designed. All in all, there's not really anything that I think would attract people to this WAD. I would suggest, before slapping down a bunch of levels to crank out a megawad or five, is to concentrate on doing individual levels (possibly as part of community projects like NOVA) and working on levels piece by piece until you've got stuff that's a lot more detailed and crafted.

(And yeah, definitely say it requires GZDoom, I tried it on ZDoom and got weird HOMs in a few places)

Hoodie said:

I'm planning on making About 4 or 5 Megawads for Doom II and A couple for Heretic.

Boys be ambitious. :D

I gave this a full run through, I've seen worse, but you need to do some more work on it. I'll go through the overall points. I'm only starting out as a Doom level designer myself but I've played the game a lot and have done my own games and graphic design in the past so I probably have a reasonable handle on what looks and plays good. At least I like to think so. These are just my opinions though, so take them or leave them as you see fit.

The maps are too short, it feels like an episode full of MAP01s. Even the first map is short for saying its a first map. You should probably work on some larger and more complex layouts. Try to work more verticality into it, more ledges and platforms and areas criss-crossing over eachother usually makes things more fun and interesting. Don't try to be too realistic with your designs either, I noticed one of your levels (Enlisted Quarters) was just a long snaking main corridor with rooms coming off of it. This might be realistic in terms of a military base or whatever, but its not that fun to actually play in Doom.

Definitely work more on texture alignment. You need to be obsessive when it comes to this. There's no real excuse, in these days of fancy-pants visual map editors, for sloppy texturing. Like Magnusblitz pointed out, misaligned textures underneath windows and non-lower pegged door trims are common mistakes that crop up a lot here. Be careful with crates as well, you generally want them to be 64x64 (or 32 or 16 for the small ones) so the textures work out right. The banks of computers in E1M3 are a bit off as well, particularly the flats. You can't align flats in the original Doom, but you can still adjust your sectors to accomodate them. You might be able to adjust them in UDMF maps though, I haven't looked into that myself. In general just pay attention to sector sizes vs. texture dimensions. You are pretty good about adding trims to doors and to seperate different textures though, so keep up with that.

I'd like a decent weapon earlier. I do suck as a player (my hand eye coordination is just bad) so bare that in mind I guess, but I generally want a shotgun or something in the first level. Even a berserk is fine. I just find the pistol isn't fun to use and just takes ages. Also, I would go easy on the custom zDoom stuff if you're first starting out. There's nothing wrong with the regular weapon/monster set - players are more comfortable with them. Once you've mastered the art of balancing gameplay with the vanilla stuff, THEN move onto experimenting with custom stuff. It just sort of complicates things to have so many different enemies and weapons available. I'm only starting out myself and am currently working on a six-level vanilla Doom 2 WAD. You might want to consider something like that. Also, don't forget your difficulty levels! I noticed you didn't have any set up.

Overall its not bad for a first effort. Your enthusiasm is good but pace yourself, you don't have to jump straight into doing 5 megawads. Making high-quality levels is more work than you think, and quality is better than quantity. I would go through each of these levels and see how you can improve them, and make them bigger and better. Also wow I rambled on way too long for my first post. Anyway hope this helps.

Arcturus said:

A lot of stuff.

The shotgun is a secret in Level 1! :D

But yeah, your feedback is definitely what I wanted.

I put a lot of custom stuff in because I want to make TC'S, so I figured if I started off already messing with the code it would make that stuff easier down the road. Also while making the map I was also making it for myself, so I wanted a new feel to the game, if that makes sense. I do have a rule when playing though, I'm not allowed to use the secrets...

I didn't add different difficulty levels because I felt it wouldn't be needed just yet. lol

I will work on my texturing and while making this it hit me that Doom 1 has absolutely not enough textures in it, so...more work there.

I thought the realistic stuff was a good idea...
But like Magnus said, the maps are a bunch of rectangles, so maybe it isn't that realistic.

The shortness of the maps did stick out to me during creation, but I guess I can just say fuck it and add to them.

I'm gonna do a run through of some of my fave wads like 2001 and Icarus for tips and shit, then get back to this...




Also, thanks to everybody who played it. (Even if you didn't comment...)