NOVA III [LINK TO NEW THREAD IN OP]

Oh, that's really cool. I'm guessing that the player always spawns at the player 1 start with the highest id?

My solution was similar but not as slick. I'll try it out if/when I end up making more changes.

is this ongoing?

Gustavo6046 said:

The map is flat, but I don't know what to do so it isn't flat.
Here is a preview. It uses the NOVA III resourse pack extensively so be warned!

Despite taking slot 25, put it wherever you want.

I haven't completely ran through the entire thread, but I came across your map and I thought it was really fun to play! Is that the most updated version?

Edit: Criticisms:

1. When you teleport back to the first area after you've gotten the soulsphere that room is really dark and it kinds of blows with the hit-scanners. Maybe you could consider including some lighting around the candles.

Actually... I don't know if this project supports dynamic lighting or not. ...but it wasn't fun to just shoot in the wind and hope I hit a shotgunner. Check your Gamma in your testing engine. Most people will likely play around 1.0 so you should try to use that as a base for your lighting.

That's a really important part of a map set I think - to make sure everyone is on the same page as far as gamma settings. The set should be an experience that should not have to be altered.

2. The room that has the blue door, I think, would be better with some higher tier enemies. As it sits, you just have to strafe from side to side at the door. Putting some demons in there might push the player back a little more and allow some of the stronger enemies to set themselves up in a harder positions. I was hoping for a little bit more difficulty for the maps climax.

That's all I can really think of. Just the lights and the end game. I thought everything was textured really well and it was interesting to play. Kudos.

Albertoni: Map13 It looks great. Not 'GREAT' in a stunning way, just 'great' with a lot of nice touches - the grass midtextures, teleports in main room, the tile stair-building when you press the first switch. Gameplay was ok till the last room. Challenge-oriented end with monster popup is too much for me. But again there is cool texture behind the long windows with yellow sky, for which I forgive you.

Benjogami: Map28 OK gameplay, difficulty is exactly in my bounds, but design feels like nothing special. Half of map is in another-boring-cave setting. I enjoyed fights but design is generic. Your best room was the straight corridor, which leads to yellow card from main crossroad and you see the outside all around - that looked nice and shows that you could do better.

Also, will the difficulty have some progression? Cause I havent seen a map without Arch Vile and Super Shotgun.

Well now that I've finished with Strange Aeons, I'm going to be focusing on my Doom mapping practice for the month of May, and I may even vainly attempt to have something for show come June 1st.

Basically, my focus will now be entirely on getting a map ready for NOVA 3.

I know I'm a bit late to the party, any spare slots for this?

Sign-ups are always open, if that's what you're wondering about. Is there a particular episode you're interested in mapping for?

I'm quite keen on the moon episode, will download the resource pack tonight. I'm planning something big in size if it fits in with the deadline

Just a quick update since I haven't checked in for a while. I scrapped the original version of my map a while back; it was starting to get a bit aimless, and bits of the architecture weren't shaping up the way I would have liked. I ended up getting hit by the one-two punch of Doom Burnout(tm) and an ill-timed computer breakdown that's left me without a regular PC for the last couple months. I intend to start working again soon, but I highly doubt I'll have anything ready by the psudo-deadline (and it would probably be rough as hell if I did).

Count me out of the mapping section. I'm overhauling my process/understanding in such a way that even if I get over my mapper's block, I won't be able to even start making anything larger-scale I'll truly be happy with for a few weeks.

I still want to contribute music, and I'll playtest the occasional map.

Alright, so my map's almost finished, just gonna polish it up here and there. It'll be up shortly-ish.

rdwpa: really disappointed to hear that, as I was looking forward to seeing what you would come up with. I've went ahead and updated the OP.

NuclearPotato: yeah, don't worry about the deadline. By all means, post what you have worked on a couple days before 1st June and you never know, you might find the motivation to get what you have to a playable/completable state!

MFG38: cool! I'll try and give some feedback on it once it's posted, so you can make any small adjustments you want to between now and the time I compile the first alpha.

an_mutt said:

Albertoni - The opening of this map [...]

Well, thank you very much. I've been away for a while, half because of real life and half burned out thanks to Shrooms 2 (which I got 2 professional voice actors for, woo).

I'll try and work more on the aesthetics of the post-teleport hub areas, yeah. I've got a few ideas actually.

As for the balancing, well, my intention was making something interesting both for gameplay with carryovers and pistol start. Yes, it's a balancing rope act and I fear that the start of the map is not the best, specially if people try to kill the arachno before going into the cave. I see your point for the ship area and I'll think on something.
Finally, I don't understand what you mean by the final area being isolated, however. It does follow the duality theme.

Oh, and do you transfer your streams to Youtube or something? I find people's streaming times are never comfortable for me. >_>

Still, thanks a whole lot! You certainly made me rethink some stuff.

NinjaLiquidator said:

Albertoni: Map13 It looks great. Not 'GREAT' in a stunning way, just 'great' with a lot of nice touches - the grass midtextures, teleports in main room, the tile stair-building when you press the first switch. Gameplay was ok till the last room. Challenge-oriented end with monster popup is too much for me. But again there is cool texture behind the long windows with yellow sky, for which I forgive you.

Hah, thanks a lot. And yeah, I made a final room that's... Probably too hard. I just can't help loving those finale battles, sorry.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby present to thee: v1.0 of my map. Feast thine eyes upon the "Crimson Hollow".

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tt4k8pmldf9he2y/mfg_n3.wad?dl=0

MFG38 said:

Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby present to thee: v1.0 of my map. Feast thine eyes upon the "Crimson Hollow".

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tt4k8pmldf9he2y/mfg_n3.wad?dl=0

I feel like playing something. FDA: http://www.mediafire.com/download/bn8q8aqqi7u0axf/mfg_n3_rdwpa_fda.lmp

-- The map is really spacious, so it's kind of hard for monsters to pose any sort of threat unless you go full slaughter, or use quite a few hitscanners/PEs/archviles.

-- I think one quick fix that could make the map a lot better is removing the blocking lines, everywhere. Pinkies basically mill around them and it's basically impossible to punch them, and they pose no threat at all. In my demo this happened twice with a horde of pinkies. In fact I couldn't even enter the cyber arena.

-- YK section didn't seem to have as much content as the rest. It was just a grab for the RK.

-- All the monster placements are direct, which in this type of layout can't really pose much of a challenge due to all of the camping. You don't have any doors, but there are a lot rooms connected in only one or two ways to one another by door-like openings, so it functions much the same as a door-heavy layout in many ways. Indirect reveals would be useful in many areas, like in the final arena, the pinkies/cyber being revealed only when the player has entered the area. The blue key and red key or also decent spots for a trap, if you want to go the route of trapping keys. (I personally try to mix it up and give keys as no-strings-attached rewards for winning a fight, but it's not such a bad idea in this case.)

-- There were also spots in my playthrough where pinkies were blocking me via infinite height. Maybe better to make these deaf, activating when the player has traveled down the lift/stairs/etc.

-- Favorite section by a lot was the manc projectile area. Weaving through a maze of projectiles is fun. I decided to play this area more aggressively, and kill the mancs even though I didn't have to, and climb the stairs even though I didn't have to. In fact a common theme is you don't really have to kill any of the monsters. The SSG isn't so effective at elevation, meaning that fighting the mancs from ground level wouldn't really be satisfying (either a SSG that misses a lot of pellets or the slower, tedious pecking away with a SG). So it would be a good idea to make the stairs somewhat more comfortable to climb. They are probably narrow so that the player can't just grab the YK and leave, but another way to prevent that is to have the YK elevated at first and a switch on the far side of the ledge lower it. (Just one switch is enough -- having to run all the way to switches on both sides might not be the most fun, due to the size of the area. If you scale it down it might be more feasible.)

-- Somewhat too many pinkies imo -- punching them can be fun, but not dozens of them. Increased monster variety could be quite useful. 30-40 pinkies/imps in various spots could be swapped out for a mix of hitscanners/revs/mancs/cacos/PEs and maybe a single AV in an area with cover.

-- Love the bg music. Love the color scheme as well. The areas look somewhat bare architecturally. Walls look bare too. That's largely a function of how big everything is, although some extra architectural implements would be helpful. Adding extra inset and sector detail really isn't going to be helpful at this scale. You'll end up with what looks like a bunch of heavy-detailed simple rooms.

-- One simple idea that could help is dividing walls/ceilings with the use of pillars. Vanguard map11 I think is probably a really great model for what can be done.

-- Lighting could also use some work: everything is between 144 and 176.

Cool stuff! I've updated the OP.

I had a quick run through the map, and the first thing that stuck out to me was that the scale of the map was far too large for what was happening in terms of gameplay. Everything felt far too empty. If you were going for an empty exploration-driven map then the architecture wasn't really interesting enough for exploration to be fun, unfortunately. Most of the map consisted of corridors and large square box rooms, with little in terms of decoration which is necessary for this kind of map, I think. The music and the strong red aesthetic combines to give a good atmosphere, so it would be cool to see you work on the level design itself. Red and black is a favourite colour combination of mine, but in this kind of map I feel that more effort needs to be made in order to mix up the two colours, so as to make the level architecture more interesting.

Finally, the monsters in the blue key ambush were deaf and didn't teleport into the room when I picked up the key.

Alright, thanks for the feedback so far. I'll get back to work soon enough.

I finally got around to getting an end to the map. Now It's time to work on extra detail, and change things according to feedback. I decided to make this map consist of mostly low tier enemies and the map is also pretty short (I am aiming for a MAP01-5 slot). Unfortunately it isn't as non-linear as I would of liked but I think it's still pretty fun for what it's worth. I want to make a separate room to get the chaingun in and I might change one of the secrets to give something else. Enjoy guys!

http://www.mediafire.com/download/jvtv6rira6twweh/StiffyN3Hell.wad

I'm not sure if you have watched demos of previous maps I've played, but you should -- it'll tell you more than comments will about which setups work + don't work any why. First Doom of the day for me, so excuse any lethargy/sloppiness.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/km0wcw279aim713/stiffyn3hell_rdwpa_fda.lmp

-- I think many of the setups played smoothly: the crusher section was my favorite, due to the lost souls coming through the window. The monster blocking lines make the closeted monsters somewhat ineffective except for as decoys (which they certainly worked as), so maybe you can add a few more souls.

-- The caco/chaingunner setup triggered by the switch near the chaingun doesn't work because infighting immediately breaks out, thanks to the chaingunners.

-- Speaking of that fight, I just got the chaingun, so I was expecting something that required it, like a hold-the-breach style warp-in of 2-3 dozen or so low-tier monsters (mostly imps + some hitscanners) originating on the gated ledge itself (at the corner of the room with the torch, not at the lift), which would have been pretty cool. That would also need quite a lot of teleport locations (four or five), because one or two imps warping in at a time would be mowed down quite quickly or just escaped from. The map design is also quite perfect for a caco or two to fly over and harass the player by the gates while he's dealing with them. Reveals of deaf closeted monsters could also be a nice surprise when the player has to leave that area.

-- There was a shellbox on the lift I had to shimmy around when I didn't want to pick it up.

-- I liked the SSG secret, quite clever texture use. Maybe you can also put a single rev (or two) in a closet behind the SSG, to tie some sort of challenge to it. I went back for the second secret at the end of my playthrough and I found it. Only problem is it doesn't work in prBoom+ because the lift trigger is blocked by an unnecessary D1 Door trigger on the other side of the secret flap.

-- Cacos in the last encounter don't quickly enter the windows. One way to make sure they do is to use monster blocking lines roughly perpendicular to the sides of the windows as such: http://i.imgur.com/7Tfc0ZN.png.

rdwpa said:

I'm not sure if you have watched demos of previous maps I've played, but you should -- it'll tell you more than comments will about which setups work + don't work any why. First Doom of the day for me, so excuse any lethargy/sloppiness.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/km0wcw279aim713/stiffyn3hell_rdwpa_fda.lmp

-- I think many of the setups played smoothly: the crusher section was my favorite, due to the lost souls coming through the window. The monster blocking lines make the closeted monsters somewhat ineffective except for as decoys (which they certainly worked as), so maybe you can add a few more souls.

-- The caco/chaingunner setup triggered by the switch near the chaingun doesn't work because infighting immediately breaks out, thanks to the chaingunners.

-- Speaking of that, fight, I just got the chaingun, so I was expecting something that required it, like a hold-the-breach style warp-in of 2-3 dozen or so low-tier monsters (mostly imps + some hitscanners) originating on the gated ledge itself (at the corner of the room with the torch, not at the lift), which would have been pretty cool. That would also need quite a lot of teleport locations (four or five), because one or two imps warping in at a time would be mowed down quite quickly or just escaped from. The map design is also quite perfect for a caco or two to fly over and harass the player by the gates while he's dealing with them. Reveals of deaf closeted monsters could also be a nice surprise when the player has to leave that area.

-- There was a shellbox on the lift I had to shimmy around when I didn't want to pick it up.

-- I liked the SSG secret, quite clever texture use. Maybe you can also put a single rev (or two) in a closet behind the SSG, to tie some sort of challenge to it. I went back for the second secret at the end of my playthrough and I found it. Only problem is it doesn't work in prBoom+ because the lift trigger is blocked by an unnecessary D1 Door trigger on the other side of the secret flap.

-- Cacos in the last encounter don't quickly enter the windows. One way to make sure they do is to use monster blocking lines roughly perpendicular to the sides of the windows as such: http://i.imgur.com/7Tfc0ZN.png.

Alright thanks, those pesky lines sometimes, I noticed when I watched the demo. I actually wanted to add a room for the chaingun up in that general location so I'll use your idea to make it happen.

Alright updated the map, added another secret, made another room for the chaingun with an ambush. Fixed the secret issue and made the Caco encounter faster.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/emy37am9gomy80b/StiffyN3Hell.wad

Has anyone taken a crack at a MAP30 yet?

TacticalStiffy: Fun easy-going map finally. I appreciate choice of weak enemies. All Vaporeons do that or just you? Btw I have found a bug. You have inescapable pit in outdoor secret. There are these rocks in blood, and one of them has place near wall where you can fall. While I like the gameplay, on the other side I must say visuals are generic and low-effort.

Obsidian: Perhaps my map will end on that slot as segment of Meggido 3 (?) since I am on 21-30. Since I layed off my original map that was meant for NOVA3 and instead I will make new map from scratch, I like that idea actually more and more.

To help alleviate the concerns of anyone who watched my most recent mapping stream; I am still going to make a map for NOVA 3. My future mapping streams will now focus on making my NOVA 3 entry, while being entirely focused around being PRBoom-compatible.

NinjaLiquidator said:

on the other side I must say visuals are generic and low-effort.

Yeah I'm better at mapping for vanilla compatibility. I'm not a fan of heavy map detail anyway. So I'll probably never will master the craft.

The swamp sounds pretty interesting. Mind if I take a backup slot there?

Tactical Stiffy said:

Alright updated the map, added another secret, made another room for the chaingun with an ambush. Fixed the secret issue and made the Caco encounter faster.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/emy37am9gomy80b/StiffyN3Hell.wad

Right then, I thought this was okay, I think the map suffers a little having a trap at every single little objective or weapon, so the combat gets a little predictable, the layout itself could do with a little tweaking to help it flow better. I like the difficulty here which come mostly from there being a scarce amount of health as opposed to having a large number of the more threatening monster types, I liked the red key area as having a few lost souls sneak up from you from the windows is a nice touch, the monsters teleporting from the fireplace is a nice touch too. There are a few combat suggestions though;
In the final room the hellknight could probably be scrapped as he offers little threat, perhaps a few imps or hitscanners instead would be better, also it might be wise to lock the room during the final fight as I cheesed it badly, also perhaps remove the demons/spectres as they are useless here, stick with hitscanners + cacos/lost souls would be better.
As for the visuals, they were okay and nothing I would particularly find critique in, the texture theme is solid if a little simple on the detail but there is nothing offensive here.

@Suitepee
Keep at it, mapping will get easier I promise, getting the basics can be pain at the start, I can vouch for that as my first effort for DWMP2012 was simply awful :P

Edit - MFG38 - Yeah this needs a lot of work. The scale of the map is way too big for the opposition you have, once you have managed to scale down the map (probably at least by 50%) then the next step would be to add height variation and interconnectivity to the map, I don't think this will be too difficult to achieve as a large proportion of the map is densely packed together in terms of rooms + corridors. The monster blocking lines really need to go.
In terms of combat, well there is very little threat here, mostly demons and imps at the moment. Add some hitscanners and mid-tier enemies to mix things up. The teleport ambush for the blue key doesn't work as the monsters are death at the moment and the action itself is very very slow so reworking the monster closet is a must.
Lastly whilst the visuals are not offensive they are very bland as it is generally one or two textures through. I think learning to do some interesting outdoor environment including using interesting shapes and geometry would be a good start to address this.
At this moment I suspect the best way to go is to experiment at the moment, see what you can come up with :)

Here's a map that looks like an apple.

I honestly don't know for which episode this map is, I tried to make it as hellish as possible but it still looks like a plutonia/temple map. Difficulty is balanced around easy/medium, so it might be a "breather" map.

Edit: Removed metal pillars, changed blue key switch, fixed texture misalignments.

Edit2: Added watermark (useless but w/e)

A nice bit of activity over the last few days! I've updated the opening posts with everything that's been posted on this page - Gran-D-Knight, I've added you to the mapper list and I'm looking forward to seeing what you can cook up. :D

Anyway, I'm done with University for the summer so I can spend much more time now giving feedback both in posts and (hopefully) in streams in the next few weeks!

Tactical Stiffy said:

a map

First thing I think about this map is that I think it lacks an early berserk - the throng of zombies and imps make it a great place for maximum punching. The ground gets fairly cluttered with low-tier monsters, so only the better of the berserk users should feel comfortable getting their punch on. Plus, berserks are just always fun.

I'm not really a fan of the SSG secret simply because it makes the first half of the map a complete cakewalk. I'm even more of a fan of a berserk pack in this situation (a non-secret berserk, specifically) because it can do a similar job of being a strong means of fighting everything, and also being a ~100% health boost for conservative players to have fun deciding on if they should save it or not. I like the secret placement itself (the switch placement is quite nice, imo), although it should have something else in there. Maybe just shells and health?

Aside from that, I think the map's fine. It's nice to have something more linear and straightforward every once in a while.

AnonimVio said:

an apple

Neat map idea, although it feels quite cramped in a not fun way. I feel like you could stretch out everything in the map to double its size (aside from the obvious things like the jump to the yellow key) and you'd be able to keep most of the gameplay elements in-tact whilst making movement more comfortable. The two thin metal pillars on the platform where the blue key is are the main offenders.

Texturing-wise the map looks great. There's not really much else I can say about it, aside from the fact I can activate the key switches from above and not have to deal with quite as much hassle from their resulting teleport traps. :V

I won't be able to submit an RC spec map by June 1st cause i simply won't have time to do all the architectural detailing and playtesting that i want to, will a playable beta do?