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Zandor

New Builder here, would you like to test my first map?

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Hey all, I'm new here but not new to doom. I've been playing on and off since my early teens. Now 25 I have set out to write my own chapter of Doom.

I am currently using Doom Builder 2 with zdoom as my test platform.
I have noticed that most people use Doom 2 for their source, but I wanted to start (mostly) classic. For this I am using to Ultimate Doom wad from Steam.

I've watched all the tutorials the Doom builder website has to offer along with some others I found on youtube to cover what was missed. Still have a lot of uncovered ground, and more to learn. I feel though, that I have a firm grasp on it.

My first map is almost complete, I'm sure that it has several rookie mistakes. I would like it to get some testing so I can have some feedback.

Am I in the right place for this, and can someone direct me to a guide on how to properly export and upload my wad here?

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Some quick advice: make sure your rooms flow together and aren't just areas connected by doors. Find ways to work everything together. Check your texture alignments. Don't forget your upper and lower unpegging. Everything else really is up to you.

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Sure. I'd love to test your map. Also i suggest using Mediafire rather than dropbox. It's still easy and free but doesn't require a login to download.

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nxGangrel said:

Sure. I'd love to test your map. Also i suggest using Mediafire rather than dropbox. It's still easy and free but doesn't require a login to download.

To be fair to Dropbox, it doesn't require you, it just REALLY begs you to.

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Zandor said:

Alright guys, I just finished my final clean up on the level. I had all my friends play test it and I'm pretty satisfied...

Please keep in mind, this is my first map and my first time ever using a level builder for any game.

this is the mediafire link, let me know if there are any issues:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/zb8cn42jqddu86q/E1M2.wad



also, just as a side note, this is a fairly, short and linear level, which was my intention. I just wanted to see if I could accomplish something simple for what will actually be the second mission in my first 9 lvl episode. Mission three will be way more open and give the player freedom and the ability to chose his progression.

For those of you wondering why I started with mission two instead of mission one, ask John Romero.

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If you run into anything that gets you stuck or a major glitch of some sort, PM me so I can get right to fixing it.

Please leave as much un-censored feedback as you like. I like blunt criticism.

If you are a level builder, or any other form of creative person and would like to work with me on a project please email me so we can talk.

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Zandor said:

Alright guys, I just finished my final clean up on the level. I had all my friends play test it and I'm pretty satisfied...

Please keep in mind, this is my first map and my first time ever using a level builder for any game.

this is the mediafire link, let me know if there are any issues:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/zb8cn42jqddu86q/E1M2.wad


Just played the wad. Here's my comments:

Usually you'll want to use the E1M1 or MAP1 slot for a 1 map wad. If you want to use music from the other wad in that slot while still being vanilla compatible, just add a lump to the wad with the same name as the music as the first level, and it will overwrite the music.

Secondly, the desk right when you spawn seems like an odd texture, that's normally a middle texture so for players that know that it just seems like an odd choice.

Overall the texturing was a little bland, you don't even have to add more detail so much as just vary the texturing a bit, at the very least, although detail was a bit low.

Another thing, most of the encounters in the map didn't require fighting, you give enough health,armor, and weak opposition and easy to escape paths so that I pretty much just skipped every fight.

Finally, some of the rooms were super cramped. The small computer maze room was tiny as fuck, try not to ever have hallways less than 64 units wide. I kept getting caught on the diagonal hallways as well.

Overall, if this was your first map ever it was quite good. Better than my first map. Try to reduce the amount of rooms in the maps. Instead, even something like just a doorway helps. One way that helps is to make large rooms (like the starting room), then add various sectors inside of the room, raise their floor heights, lower some, add a few walls (but not complete ones), and you basically got yourself a nice, interesting battlefield. Speaking of doors, try to set the doors back 8 or 16 or 32 pixels back, it generally looks better and lets you have doors in rooms higher than 128 units high. For example, do this:

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_______----------_______
_______----------_______
----------DOOR--------------
_______----------_______
_______----------_______
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Right now, you have this:

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----------DOOR--------------

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I hope that little ascii art there makes sense. However, the difficulty would have felt appropriate for, say, MAP01 or E1M1 of a megawad.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, you did do a few good things. I noticed no doors which weren't properly pegged, also having monster closets open up in previously visited areas is a good idea. Overall I'd say just add some more interesting encounters. The amount of health and ammo was spot on pretty much, good job there.

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Just finished playing it. And it's got way more effort put into it than my first map, I'll tell you that much.

The level itself was okay. The only thing it really needs is variety. Use different textures, and make more higher and lower floors. Some of the walls were shaped oddly, try to make them more square/rectangle or give them a more "natural" looking shape. This once is more optional, try adding dynamic lights for an atmosphere effect.

But over all it was pretty good. Even for a newbie level designer. It wasn't that hard, and I think there should be less ammo and more monsters. But it was a decent effort. Good job.

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I agree that the texturing is pretty bland. But besides that not too much is wrong with the map for a first try. WAY better than my first map haha. But one thing you should change is the amount of health and armor. There is way too much I finished with half the kills and full health. Good attempt though, keep dooming

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And, one more thing: As far as seeing this map in a real wad, I would not rate it very high. But for a first map it's actually very good, in that case I rate it very high. But the only reason I would not rate it high in a real wad is two reasons (well, one):

1. Maps should have fun fights.

2. If not that, the map should at least be interesting, look good, be aesthetically pleasing, etc.

There's not really either of those in the map right now. I think you just need to work on the overall presentation (and as I said, try to add some more varied fights instead of monsters in front to mow down while running forward at 50mph). You'll get better at the overall presentation with time. So just work on the fun fights.


As for everyone talking about the ammo and health being too much.. I don't really want to tell someone there's too much because the changes are usually become too drastic and then there isn't enough. I actually had almost died at one point, but when I started running the rest of the map fast it actually got easier.

EDIT: Just opened the map in doombuilder and noticed something else. When you make pillars in a room for example, don't make a sector and raise it up to the ceiling. Instead, draw the sector, then select every linedef, and hit delete with all of the linedefs selected. This makes a void which looks much better on the automap and also generally looks better, it behaves slightly differently in a few cases too, I believe.

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I actually really enjoyed this map. It brought back that old doom feel which is a nice change every once in awhile. A few notes to make it more nice looking.

1. Indent the doors by 16 and put lights. look at some of the original doom maps for examples.

2. Only change floor textures when you change the floor height. Like for outside the ground is leveled with the inside move it down 8 from the floor that leads to the outside.

The highlight was the last room with the cool lighting effect. The only thing I would change to that room is the exit switch and make a separate room that has an actual switch in it. Otherwise it was pretty good for a first map good job.

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Whymes5 said:

Usually you'll want to use the E1M1 or MAP1 slot for a 1 map wad. If you want to use music from the other wad in that slot while still being vanilla compatible, just add a lump to the wad with the same name as the music as the first level, and it will overwrite the music.


Use MAPINFO and do

map E1M1 "Really Cool Level Name"
{
music = "track"
next = "E1M2"
}
I haven't done a MAPINFO for Doom 1 before but I assume that's how it works. Go on Doom Wiki and check their music page for the track names.

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I thought it was ok. It had very little height variation and I really dislike narrow corridors. Walls in doom like to hug you and never let go. If you want narrow you could go like 96 wide instead of 64.

I like how you can jump to the ledge by using the barrel. More mappers should make use of this. It gives player a cool choice ("do i wanna blow up barrel to kill baddies" or " do i wanna jump on top of toxic waste to get more loot"?


The end room was a bit lame. You can just camp at top of the stairs.

You can also jump from red key room, to the blue key. Makes me wonder why do you even need the blue key.



Enemies also can be alerted from ykey room making their "ambush" outside a bit pointless (kinda made the map easier for me when I can just use the good ol' "bounce a nade from window rims" -trick.)

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Having played it I can say that the default textures are really ugly when you design an entire room based on them. There are also multiple instances of misaligned textures and doors aren't indented making them look really "not good".

I'll give you a tip for aligning textures, go into the visual mode and highlight (look at with the crosshair) the texture you want to align the other adjacent textures to and press A. It only works with textures that are the same. Also Shift + A aligns them vertically.

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SavageCorona said:

Use MAPINFO and do

map E1M1 "Really Cool Level Name"
{
music = "track"
next = "E1M2"
}
I haven't done a MAPINFO for Doom 1 before but I assume that's how it works. Go on Doom Wiki and check their music page for the track names.


I was assuming that the project was vanilla compatible.

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I don't think it's vanilla compatible at all.

Zandor said:

I am currently using Doom Builder 2 with zdoom as my test platform.

ArmouredBlood said:

I wanted to record a demo with boom, but it uses zdoom format

illuknisaa said:

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OK, it's ZDoom. The missing texture in illuknisaa's screenshot is there probably because he used Doom 2 IWAD instead of Doom 1, though (or can it be Brutal Doom's fault somehow?). There should be a D1-specific plain pink STARTAN.

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So, when I get home from work, I will reply to all your reviews and suggestions. In the mean time I wanted to respond to the current conversation, that should also cover some other subjects.

When I made the level I was going for classic Doom, with classic controls, the ability to jump, crouch, strafe, and look up/down was not intended for this level(therefore use of those features would break my map and my overall design of the level). This may be viewed as a bad decision, but there is something to be said for the difficulty involved in playing classic. I feel having those other abilities detracts from the game and experience that makes classic Doom what it is.

The wad's current state of running in zDoom, was an oversight on my rookie knowledge of how things work. I was under the impression that zDoom was a form of level tester to work with doom builder. I would like the wad to be able to function by someone buying Ultimate Doom on Steam, then loading my wad and using classic textures, and classic controls. Is this possible? and if so what do I need to do to achieve this? (Please don't tell me i have to scrap my wad and start from scratch)

As clarification, I am using Doom Builder 2, with the Ultimate Doom wad file, from the version I bought on steam. zDoom is the platform I was using to test the wad because I haven't yet found a way to load my wad into my Ultimate Doom game's folder for play.

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While technically not a "good" level per say, for a first level it is probably better than what most people would make as their first level.

I don't really care as much about height variation as many other people do and feel it's overrated, but there are still a couple of things that this map does wrong. First, I did not like it how crude and random the rooms and corridors were. Secondly, I did not know that the exit door was actually an exist switch which ended the level. Generally you want to have an actual switch for that so that players don't end the level by accident. That said, there were a few things about the level I did like. The outdoor area was done pretty well, and I found the last room containing the exist to be pretty cool even though it made little sense in terms of logic.

A pretty good first effort I would say.

EDIT: A few more tips:

1. Make your maps for Doom 2. There is really no advantage in making them for The Ultimate Doom. It's the exact same game but with fewer enemies. 99% of all new wads made are made for Doom 2. By using Doom 1 you are really just limiting yourself for no reason. If you like the idea of creating episodes similar to Doom 1 then you can do this in Zdoom via special mapinfo lumps even if using Doom 2.

2. There exist many source ports for Doom and it's important to understand which one you should map for. A map made for Boom will work in Zdoom, but an Zdoom map won't work for a boom-only source port. Don't just assume that everybody uses Zdoom and nothing but Zdoom.

3. Have fun making Doom maps :)

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To make your map vanilla compatible, open your map in db, then open a new instance of db and make a new map in doom format, nothing else. Now switch to sector mode on your map instance, and select everything. Copy, then paste it to the new map. Do the same with things.

Now comes the fun part where you have to find all the lines using zdoom actions and change them to 'doom' actions, which means using the defined, numbered actions instead of the definable dropdowns. There is no tool that will do this for you as far as I know.

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Nice effort :D but the texture are pretty bland, and tiny places as fuck, but over all it was too easy the map (and short), if you could use more textures, this map would be good but nice map for be your first time (even better than mine) so keep it up!

Another thing, try to do traps in some key points of your map, and yeah you need to work on the detail and texture align. Good work.

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scifista42 said:

OK, it's ZDoom. The missing texture in illuknisaa's screenshot is there probably because he used Doom 2 IWAD instead of Doom 1, though (or can it be Brutal Doom's fault somehow?). There should be a D1-specific plain pink STARTAN.


Brutal Doom can be not good buggy but it doesn't take out textures from an IWAD. I'd assume it's the Doom 2 IWAD thing.

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IMO, It really bugs me personally that most newbie mappers tend to use a Zdoom mapping format, with little to no Zdoom features in the map, and use a gameplay mod to test the map. I feel that they should start off simple by making their maps in either limit removing or Boom format to get a feel for what a good map should be like, and also to NEVER TEST THEIR MAPS WHILE USING A GAMEPLAY MOD (I.E. Brutal Doom, Complex Doom, etc.)

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