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Specter4582

First time mapper here!

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Just wanted to post my first map on here and get some reviews and maybe some tips. Spend about 30 hours overall making this wad, as this was a learning experience for me. I wish to continue to develop more levels for this wad. A few spots are based off of MAP02 from DOOM 2. The map should work in any source port. Has been tested on GZdoom, Zdoom and chocolate Doom. If you find any bugs let me know, enjoy!!

Lost Outpost A54

Download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4qQmTpT0zKzenZ2bTdLZ0VxLTA/view?usp=sharing

Zdoom in-game screens
Gallery link: http://postimg.org/gallery/3edwzfcda/



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Well it looks very good for a "first time" map. I haven't had a chance to play it yet (time constraints) but it looks good for a traditional style level. I wish I could say more.

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Looks like one of these old "castle" maps but plays well, however it seems that almost all ammunition you get are just what the zombies drop, I would recommend put a few more bullet clips and shotgun shells.

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I had some fun with this. Some good gameplay ideas for a newbie mapper. Some points though.

-You should make a habit of inward beveling your doors. Having them flat with other walls kinda makes them look bad.

example stolen from another thread


-You should stick with doortrak for the uh, door tracking for every door. Having the blue and red key textures looks really odd, especially since they don't require keys.
http://imgur.com/8wYdKxg

-Make a habit of clearly identifying what key is required next to the locked door for every locked door you have.

-What editor are you using? Make sure that you have your textures aligned. Editors such as doom builder have features that allow you to auto align textures.

http://imgur.com/eQ13i2H

What is your intended source port? Making a Boom level that's only tested in ZDoom can cause some unintended side effects due to port behavior.

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Okay so here is my opinion. Don't take anything as an insult as this is a VERY good first map.

First I liked the enemy placements throughout the level except the Demon in the first room which felt out of place. The level lacked ammo and I died because of the lack of health.


I suggest that your doors be thinner because IMO thick doors look ugly. Also, unless this is intended, use doortrak texture instead of the bluekey texture on the doors.


There are a few textures that are misaligned, I am only pointing this out so you don't get into the bad habit of doing this, like me :)


I loved the shadow effect here!


I loved your geometry here! It looks really cool...


In this screenshot the doors are REALLY thick and they clip into the sky. This looks really bad and you should learn how to fix it.


Finally I thought that this looked really cool.

So basically I liked the gameplay of your level and besides a few graphic complaints I hope to see more of your work in the future :)

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Wow thanks guys for great tips and for pointing out all the misaligned textures. I thought I got all those pesky little things haha. Definitely will change the door track textures and make those doors thinner and sink them in so they look better.

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Specter4582 said:

miss aligned textures

Haha.

Not bad for a first map, but still extremely beginner-esque. The rooms are mostly blocky shaped - rectangles are like the least inspiring design possible. The monsters pose little challenge - don't get me wrong, it was fun to mow through them, but still, challenge needs to be present. The concept of height variation affecting combat is little developed. You get bonus points for repopulating the map while backtracking, and for using a secret key for a secret area - on the other hand, BFG (and plasmagun too, for that matter) was an inappropriately powerful tool for this map. You should approach thing placement with respect to the whole map, not merely throw random goodies in. The problems with misaligned and/or unfitting textures have already been mentioned.

Good luck with your future mapping!

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Of course the map is fun: Doom is fun, and the map is light and short, and it went down smoothly. It was such that it wasn't a waste of time to click on, download, and play for a few minutes. People have already pointed out good elements that they appreciated, but don't let that set your bar low.

It's hard to give objectively good tips, because pretty much everyone seems to have a different opinion on doom maps.

I would prefer "shortcuts" to open up and conjoin pieces of when you have to backtrack - not necessarily a large shortcuts to skip from one side of the map to another, but open up the local connectivity between connected components of the map so there isn't just one and only one path between rooms.
Also, if a map is going the "The Hallway" style of map, I would recommend treating the map like a balloon animal when constructing it: wrap things around onto themselves, have the segments vary in size and shape, and keep things tightly knit together. It keeps your mapping options open for choosing paths, windows and also encourages height variation.

Also, pencil and paper might be the best mapping tool for someone before they become extremely fluent in Doombuilder; it's easier to project your imagination onto a paper than it is to fight against doombuilder while trying to visualize a map.

Also, i'm just some random stranger on the internet who hasn't even made that many maps, so don't listen to me and my pedantic rant. You could be playing doom instead of reading this!

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NoisyVelvet said:

Of course the map is fun: Doom is fun, and the map is light and short, and it went down smoothly. It was such that it wasn't a waste of time to click on, download, and play for a few minutes. People have already pointed out good elements that they appreciated, but don't let that set your bar low.

It's hard to give objectively good tips, because pretty much everyone seems to have a different opinion on doom maps.

I would prefer "shortcuts" to open up and conjoin pieces of when you have to backtrack - not necessarily a large shortcuts to skip from one side of the map to another, but open up the local connectivity between connected components of the map so there isn't just one and only one path between rooms.
Also, if a map is going the "The Hallway" style of map, I would recommend treating the map like a balloon animal when constructing it: wrap things around onto themselves, have the segments vary in size and shape, and keep things tightly knit together. It keeps your mapping options open for choosing paths, windows and also encourages height variation.

Also, pencil and paper might be the best mapping tool for someone before they become extremely fluent in Doombuilder; it's easier to project your imagination onto a paper than it is to fight against doombuilder while trying to visualize a map.

Also, i'm just some random stranger on the internet who hasn't even made that many maps, so don't listen to me and my pedantic rant. You could be playing doom instead of reading this!



Thank you so much your really boosting my self esteem. I know this wont be the only map I'll ever make and my next one is definitely going to be non-linear. Thanks for the support!

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Had a lot of fun playing this, Still have some objections :>

* Why did you think placing a Rocket launcher near the beginning of the level is a good idea ? ,even the door that leads to ir isn't acting like a Red key/skull door .
* The beginning of the Map,, Reminds me of "E1M2" ( has almost the same layout )
* Few Miss-aligned textures (skip this if you don't care) .
* Every room was easily skip-able .
* The outer areas looked nice, Though i didn't like how the doors clip into the sky near the 2nd outer area .

Still it's not so bad for a first map .

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This map crashed in chocolate doom when I tried to look out of the window in @thenerdturtle2's 3rd screenshot, it says "no more plats" and you said you tested this with chocolate doom.

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I liked this combination of materials (STEPLAD -> MIDBARS*), they blend together surprisingly seamlessly and end up looking good. Shame for the contrast with jarring texturing elsewhere.

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DMGUYDZ64 said:

* Why did you think placing a Rocket launcher near the beginning of the level is a good idea ?


Why would it not be a good idea?

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Most of the beginning of the level was me just learning how to make things. That's why there is a random secret with a rocket launcher right at the beginning. As for the doors and misaligned textures I've already been working on that and fixing it. Could you elaborate on skip able rooms?

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I disagree with DMGUYDZ64's complaint about skippable rooms. The word is typically used for maps where it's very easy and even strongly advantageous to simply run past all monsters instead of fighting them, also because the combat would be tedious if the player had to kill all the monsters. But here, I thought everything was more than OK in this regard. I've tried to rush through the map fast, killing only enemies in my way and running around them whenever it seemed advantageous. And I exited the map with 93 kills out of 108. That's a lot (given the playstyle I've used), and I consider the map's combat pace and usage of space relatively good.

Or maybe I misunderstood what he was talking about.

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Well thanks, scifista42 for that comment, I thought that I did a good job making the fights interesting and somewhat difficult. I will be posting and updated version of the map in the next few days. Also I'll see if I can fix the compatability with chocolate doom.

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AD_79 said:

Why would it not be a good idea?

It would be much better if it was replaced by an SSG , for some balance you know .

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Specter4582 said:

Well thanks, scifista42 for that comment, I thought that I did a good job making the fights interesting and somewhat difficult.

That's not what I would say about them, not at all. They were basic and easy - mostly just monsters thrown into a corridor in front of the player, which makes combat trivial and generally not so great. What I said was that they were satisfying-enough to kill (because it could be done quickly) and not so trivial to run around.

Also I'll see if I can fix the compatability with chocolate doom.

The problem is caused by the metal lift. It has tag 0, and is activated by linedefs on its back side. In ZDoom, it works. But vanilla, Chocolate Doom and all classic ports treat tag 0 as a normal tag, which means that all sectors with tag 0 in the entire map will be affected. This applies to all S1/SR/W1/WR/G1/GR linedef actions, but not D1/DR ones. You must always give a non-zero tag to the sector that's being affected by such an action. In your map, a monster activated the lift and crashed the map. As soon as the player would activate the lift himself, the game would crash as well. Just give it a tag, and pay attention for these things (called zdoomisms).

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I wouldn't say the fights were basic, just that they're far too easy, to the point that a Nightmare Tyson run would probably not be out of the question for the average player. To be fair, this is highly dependent on how skilled the mapper is at actually playing the game, and it is probably better for lesser skilled mappers to create easy but otherwise well-balanced maps than try to create super-hard (from their perspective) maps, since the latter isn't going to receive proper playtesting and will almost certainly be a disaster as a result. You've got to know your limitations.

(This isn't meant as an insult, by the way. Most people here have probably been playing Doom for over a decade. Some (myself included) over two decades. What's easy for us is not easy for everybody.)

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Specter4582

I like your map, it happened to me with my first map, but making more maps will help you a lot.

PS: Let's map together at somepoint, im newbie as well.

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Still lots of misaligned texture seams everywhere (STARTAN, METAL, BRONZE, MARBLE, etc...) and combat hasn't improved, but fine attempt at non-linearity at least. I've encountered a bug with the raising floor in the new northern room: I rushed onto the floor while it was raising, hit my head into a ceiling (or it was enemy's head), and the floor started infinitely descending into the ground and deep below it. It was in Chocolate Doom.

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One thing we need to remember guys, is not to flood newbie mappers with information. Combat/item placement is very hard to get right, even for many experienced mappers, so at this point I think it's best to point out bugs/misalignments/visual oddities - Stuff that feels "broken" - before going into the subtle nuances of mapping.

One thing I always tell newbie mappers - Make sure your textures don't clash. A good way to do this is by adding simple "border sectors". Adding them can be a massive step towards making a more immersive environment.


______________________________________




The result is that a door that once seemed "flat":




...Now seems to have some real depth, and is part of a doorway:




Players will always notice the addition of these details, and they're a lot of fun to add when you're getting into the mapping groove.

Border sectors really help with that annoying "door disappears into the sky" effect, present about halfway through your map.



^Above we see that the door looks okay without a border, but then when it opens:





Whoops! It vanishes into the sky! Below shows how one little extra sector can fix everything:






So, before you worry too much about your items/monster placement (which I thought was fine anyway), make sure your map feels "complete" by fixing little oddities like this. It really makes the process rewarding when you see what you can do!

I hope this helps you out on your way, I'm really looking forward to see what you make next :)

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Whoops, I downloaded the link in the first post - It might be a good idea to update that link as well for newcomers to the thread.

Anyway, best of luck with your future mapping :)

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