New Speedmap WAD

I've been a little slow about putting this up, but this week's Speedmapping WAD has been released, with a whole 17 maps following this week's theme, which was "Tech Base." I never knew just how much some of these people would be able to do in 100 minutes, but I am continually surprised at how good some of the stuff is. Go over and check it out.

Copy/Paste madness Ling?

I was in such a rush finishing my map that I forgot to add sufficient ammo and health. Later on I figured that this wouldn't be a problem since the player could carry ammo over from the previous maps.

*Arno reads dwspd004.txt

UNLESS my map is added as MAP01. Damn. =(

Big problems this time.

1) No health whatsoever. Ouch.

2) The Revenants. Too many of the damned things. Three would have been about right.

3) Cacodemon and Mancubus stuck together. Whoops.

4) A couple of incorrect textures (there's one in the start room).

5) Wrong sector height in a sector.

If I could do it again, the enemy layout would be VERY different :)

That pack was very fun. I thought a couple levels were way too dark, and I couldn't see anything, but other than that, and the fact that they were for the most part pretty hard IMHO, they were great. I can't believe that people are out there making better maps in 100 minutes than at least 50%-75% of the stuff on ftp.cdrom.com (that's an estimate, I'm not sure the exact percent). I think everyone knew which level's was Fyrestorm's immediately (BTW, is there any exit or anything, I'm stuck).

Of course my map is the best ;)
Seriously Frederiks map kicked ass and was better than all previous efforst put together (and his other maps rocked as well!)Comments on my maps are greatly appreciated (HINT HINT!) Dens me some Mails telling me what you think (HINT HINT!)

Think I was subtle enough? (HINT HI oh wait no hint hint there. :P )

A couple of levels were pretty low on health and armor this time (especially Nick's - but I still managed a 100/100).
Nice maps by Fredrik, Gemini, Jonathan, Sir Robin and Anthony. Opulent's would've been nice if you could generate some monster fighting :)

most of these 100 minute maps are better than I could make in a month

then again I suck

no , i didnt put an exit on mine, sorry

Damn you Adam! Mine wasn´t cool? What was wrong? I NEED FEEDBACK!

I'd like to try this speedmapping event out sometime. But at the weekends I'm always busy. I'm never home. :/

heh i thought my map seemed much better while i was building it..it seems too simple while playing. lots of bugs, u cant even reach the exit. anyway, really liked the maps 4, the one by jonothan rimmer and anthony soto and nick bakers. and some others i dont remember.

Just noticed the first secret room door doesn´t open, even though it did in testing. weird

rimmer and tarins maps were wicked, and nick's was pretty leet. fyre yours just sucked, stupid cows. anthony soto wins my heart with his seczy map.

i think fredrik is using prototype sectors for detail and such, but thats just my opinion, i could be wrong.

Thanks for the comments. I normally work on weekends, but I hope to catch as many as I can. Good excercise to generate ideas.

My favorite map was Jon Rimmer's with special mention to Fredrik, Tarin, and Captain Napalm. Fred has one of the most complete and solid maps. Tarin had a great start with those stairs. Captain also had a good level albeit sometimes too crowded (first room), too dark, and the level was a bit small. Pick up the pace son!

Oh yeah, I forgot one.

6) No secrets. Duh!

some very good maps in that!

If that is the stature of level required to win, then I should have entered this contest a while ago.

But don't get me wrong, these levels are fun and excellent. It pulls back toward the "instant playability" factor instead of the "repetetive huge levels walking around overwhelmed lost puzzled confused this is dumb" kind of crap we see so much of lately ::cough cough::

It's also too bad that no matter what sort of level I am building, everything inevitably leaks whenever I reach a certain linedef of sector or something. I'm editing happily then boom everything after a certain point is corrupted and leaks all over the screen. Damn Wadauthor(they say it has every feature...)

Oh whoops, I get it, they get better by the level. Never mind I won't be entering...

::he he he he HAHAHAHA::

I only had 25 minutes, instead of 100. I didn't have time to manage my usual fiffy-esque final designs...

amazing what they can do with 100 minutes. This really makes you Megawad designers look lazy. :)
just another 4 more years, and we'll have it!

Other than there not being enough health/armour in some of the maps, all pretty good.

I think the reason some things are missing owes to the limited time availible. I mean, I know with every map I make I test it about ten times, something impossible to do in such short time. Oh well.

Normally my levels are not that crowded or tight...I only tested my level at the end and noticed it was WAY smaller than I first believed but it was to late to change architecture and time to pleace items (6 or so minutes though in my opinion it´s quite playable)

Thanks for the feedback...

Is it just me or has anyone noticed Wavelength is complaining a lot? heh. The point for some of us more experienced mappers is not to get better (hell, I can't get much better) but to generate ideas. Thats usually the biggest problem for an experienced mapper who is usually starved for ideas.

Captain -
I had the same problem with my speedmap. About 50 minutes in when I did the first nodebuild I noticed the level was about half the size it should be (crowded). But I quickly fixed that using DCK's scale tool.

Looking back the size of your level was not that small. You had quite a few rooms, the width of the map as big as mine. But a lot of that was tunneling. Anyways, continue to strive for interesting starts

..with that fucking 3DDownloads crap? first it says its own referrer is "malformed", then it's busy constantly, and when I finally get in, tells me something like 60 connexions is all it accepts?? the TX and NY mirrors are about equally bad, and the 3rd one has yet to be up when I've tried it.

Now that I've got that off my chest.. have been looking at the speedmaps as they come along, and two major comments:

The maps all have potential, and some have been very good indeed -- but all are to some degree unfinished. I do hope the authors will either polish them up and re-release them (hey, you've already got the makings of nice megapacks, if they're fleshed out and debugged), or allow the rest of the world to have their way with 'em. Why not let authors state whether they'll let folk use their maps as a base, rather than this blanket "thou shalt not" presently being applied??

On the downside -- Putting a ton of monsters right at the start with absolutely no supplies and so crowded you can't get thru 'em does not constitute "difficulty", that's just lousy critter placement. Just because you're on the clock is no reason to be insane about it.

you guys are saying 100 minutes but on the page it just says 60. 60 min=1 hour. I'm gonna do a map this week, just wanted verification.

*Maps look good this week everyone

just wanted to mention that I think this speedmapping endeavor has been great and I commend everyone for their efforts.

My luck has sucked til now. two weeks I had RL commitments and week 3 I forgot the time. week 4 I was there and happily building away when about 70 minutes into my masterpiece, I got a wauthor.exe error and lost it all. who thinks of saving when you're trying to beat the clock? sigh. I look forward to this weeks theme and hope I can contribute with the rest of you.

Ling and whoever else is responsible, great job and keep up with the great ideas.

What the...? I´ve been using DCK for 3 years and I´ve never even seen the scale tool! ack
Maybe I should read more docs...

whats a scale tool?

sheesh. I'm working with amateurs here. :D

Ok, DCK's scale tool allows you to take a series of sectors and resize them. Let's say you made an area but it turned out to cramped then you originally envisioned it. Well instead of wasting time resizing every linedef you can scale it. You could instantly change a room from 64x64 to 128x128 and still have the internal scale of the linedef/sector relationship not thrown off.

First, go into sector mode of DCK and select the sectors you want to effect. Hit Cntrl-A.
On the bottom right toolbar you will see scale factor 1:1. You can increase or decrease the scale of the effected sectors by hitting < or >. Each scale increment is 10% so if you wanted to double the size of your level you would have to hit > 10 times.
Then, when you've got the scale you want hit enter. DCK will always show you an outline of the proposed sectors size befeore you hit enter.

The only minor problem I find with this is it often puts the sectors off the grid. So go back and highlight the effected sectors in linedef mode and select snap to grid. Make sure your grid is smaller then any object on your map (like 4)...otherwise linedefs will merge.

Try it a few times on some random map...

do u have the dck version of the darkening2 texture set?

by the way, i set the dck screen resolution to 1024x726 or something, u know how to change this? its impossible to see the grids on that high resoultion..