Mapsets of Phase 1 and 2 need near-total replacement

Frankly, most of the maps are really crappy. Aside from the incomplete and bad assets, maps are one of the project's biggest weaknesses.

I propose that someone with experience in organizing community projects (not me, obviously) start a community project to harness high quality maps from the people who frequent WADs and Mods. The people behind the various DTWiD stuff would be great to have if they're interested and able to spare time for it.

I realize that the state of the assets might be a big turnoff for potential mappers. They should be allowed to build for regular Doom 1/2 if they prefer. Custom textures could also be accepted, in order to both provide creative juices to mappers as well as give the maps their own visual identity more distinct from Doom.

A nice goal of a project like that would be if the levels also doubled as deathmatch maps too, making it so we only need two IWADs instead of the three we have.

What's the point of FreeDM anyway? Why not just, y'know, play a DM wad with Freedoom?

It's not like we need to throw it the maps already made either; just include them on the website as an optional PWAD instead.

Sodaholic said:

Frankly, most of the maps are really crappy. Aside from the incomplete and bad assets, maps are one of the project's biggest weaknesses.

I propose that someone with experience in organizing community projects (not me, obviously) start a community project to harness high quality maps from the people who frequent WADs and Mods. The people behind the various DTWiD stuff would be great to have if they're interested and able to spare time for it.

I realize that the state of the assets might be a big turnoff for potential mappers. They should be allowed to build for regular Doom 1/2 if they prefer. Custom textures could also be accepted, in order to both provide creative juices to mappers as well as give the maps their own visual identity more distinct from Doom.

"maps are shit, almost every map is shit, let's make new but i don't want to do map". Correrct?

At least Freedm has PLAYABLE deathmatch maps, and enjoyable to some extent. But yeah, one could create a dm map in a separate chunk of sectors, the problem rises if the map uses too many line specials, though.

CWolfRu said:

"maps are shit, almost every map is shit, let's make new but i don't want to do map". Correrct?

Is it necessary to be willing to fix a problem to talk about said problem?

If I could make maps that are fun to play and don't just look decent, I'd contribute. It doesn't take a mapper to see how the majority of Freedoom's maps plainly suck.

well then, for those who are good at making fun maps, create layouts (this should be quick, i think) and post them in a dedicated thread, and then let detailers do the rest. the detailers HAS to respect the layout, it would be resource burn and a waste of time otherwise.

Double Impact is perfectly fine barring vanilla limits; it did win a cacoward after all.

hey I could probably start cranking out some TWiD-ish maps (while having a distinct style(s) to them) for phase 2 sometime around June, if you can wait that long

AD_79 said:

hey I could probably start cranking out some TWiD-ish maps (while having a distinct style(s) to them) for phase 2 sometime around June, if you can wait that long

Well I for one appreciate that offer, but right now we really don't know what the project leaders want, and until we do know organizing mappers to make new maps is probably wasting people's time (e.g. we saw how the Kulak face was generally liked by forum members but rejected by the guys in charge).

It would be quite nice if they could tell us all what exactly they want for maps fairly soon, as I can (probably) do the occasional map in between other projects before June comes around.

Project leaders/managers: Just say what you want and I'll do what I can, all in good time of course :)

Hi all. I'm taking a quick break from various projects and started working on a vaguely Doom 2-esque map the other day. As previously mentioned, I'd like to know the mapping situation sometime to know if this direction would be worth continuing or not!

There was one map which was from the first known freedoom map release.
Also, that is shit that Double Impact is Episode 4. Why can't we have a new and original Episode 4?

because you havent made it yet ;)

Superluigieth1 said:

Also, that is shit that Double Impact is Episode 4. Why can't we have a new and original Episode 4?

I'm not seeing the problem here. It's a great map pack and they were kind enough to donate it to the project. That's not so different from the people who create single maps and donate them to Freedoom, only difference is that they donated a whole episode.

AD_79 said:

started working on a vaguely Doom 2-esque map the other day.

Hey, that looks pretty good. Really retro looking too.

I'd honestly support having the other three episodes be popular episodes that have been released in the past as well, like a "best-of" of some of the past. If only it were possible to get permission for one of Espi's episodes...

on one hand, getting other high-quality episodes of levels in this project would cut down on time spent making maps and can be focused on other stuff like art-assets, music and story. on the other hand, it would maybe make it a bit dull to play since it's just episodes you could play with the real thing anyway.

but perhaps there could be a compromise, having the Ultimate Doom variant be episodes made by other people, while Doom 2 is the main game and story. i guess that's kind of the direction this project is taking already? Ravage's Mapgame and Espi's Back to Basics would be nice as E1 and E2 replacements in that case.

the layout + some thing placement (no real item placement yet though)

Much more "old-school" than what I'm used to making, heh. Not that this is a bad thing, I'd assume!

Hi, here's the map. Please tell me if this is something that could/should be adopted by Freedoom, and I'll (eventually) make more if so.

NOTE: No difficulty settings. Damaging water is present; let's just say it's very hot ;) (might change but eh i like the aesthetics of it)

that's great :)
it's challenging, but not too much

is it vanilla compatible tho?

raymoohawk said:

is it vanilla compatible tho?

Of course! I did a test in ChocoRenderLimits and the most I saw was 190 segs and 80 visplanes. Well within vanilla limits.

well i'm liking the map a lot :)

my only complaint is that i ended up with too little ammo by the end of the level, tho i dont know if that would still be a problm once its put into a slot

I don't know about Phase 1, as the last time I played it half the monster sprites were still missing, but I'm five maps into Phase 2 and so far I think they're great. Do the bad maps come later?

Most of the maps seem 100% fine to me. The first half of E3 was pretty bad, though, along with the Phase 2 secret levels. I feel like this a massive load of work that'd be caused by one person's opinion.

If anything. I have no major problem with the current levelset. Some may be a tad, annoying or so. But I rather play something fresh, than something I've already played x amount of times on thing like Zandronum servers for example. I'd say stick with the current and bring in some new. I like to see what new mappers and so like to bring to the plate for us to test out. I rather fresh new submissions, than something already overplayed. Not that there's anything wrong with zandronum and all or so.

Why not making a poll to decide which maps in Phase 1 and 2 are the worst?

Good or bad maps is very subjective, and collecting more opinions would help when deciding which map to substitute.

SuperSomariDX said:

If anything. I have no major problem with the current levelset. Some may be a tad, annoying or so. But I rather play something fresh, than something I've already played x amount of times on thing like Zandronum servers for example. I'd say stick with the current and bring in some new. I like to see what new mappers and so like to bring to the plate for us to test out. I rather fresh new submissions, than something already overplayed.

Solution: Don't play Zandronum

But seriously, it's really a matter of how much polish you (we?) want to put in.

Shouldn't the last missing map slots from Phase 1 be filled before even considering replacing any other maps, especially ones that are totally fine?