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WhyNott

Staging65 - reimagining of first level from doom64

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I have recently finished making my baby's first doom level.

 

(Not really my actual first level, first one I finished more like).

 

image.png

 

2pwzfQ.png

 

image.png

 

2pwVcs.png

(I took those screenshots while using the [v 0 .9] Doom Neural Upscale 2X pack, my map doesn't have any custom textures.)

 

The level is a very rough re-imagining of the first level from doom 64 for doom 2 that I did as a sort of level design exercise for myself. I wonder how much of the original can you spot in it.

 

I tested the level in gzdoom and chocolate doom and it is perfectly playable in both (although in chocolate doom one of the rooms has a graphical glitch I couldnt fix).

 

Here is the link:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yfRRWgQwwZLRiM6x-Z8agnjoWC4mhbDL/view?usp=sharing

 

Enjoy!

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@WhyNott

Welcome to Doomworld! Join in and enjoy your stay.

 

  • Looking at your screenshots, you've done some nice work with some of the lighting and shadows. So that's a good thing to build on.
  • There looks to be some amount of height variation in your level. So that's another good thing.
  • The last screenshot definitely looks very similar to the original's penultimate room.
     
  • The color scheme in the level is rather bland. It's mostly shades of brown, many of which are very close together, color-wise. This may just be personal preference, but it makes the level look rather blah. At the same time, it makes the non-brown features really stand out, which could be good, particularly for indicating what might be a  secret. So let's say this is neutral.
  • Now, on to some of the issues that are evident:
    • There are texture misalignments. You've fixed some of them, but missed others. It's particularly noticeable on the columns in the bottom screenshot.
      • Although I get it, columns can be awkward to align textures on.
    • Your doors aren't inset into the wall. This isn't so bad when the sector the door is in is as tall as the door texture (such as in screenshot 3), but it is bad when the sector is taller than the door texture (such as in the bottom screenshot).
      • In general, avoid putting such textures with obvious features (doors, switches, etc.) on walls that are taller than they are. You just end up with a vertically-repeating switch or door texture, which just looks unpolished.
    • You also want to try to avoid using textures that are obviously out of place on the linedef where you put them.
      • Don't limit your creativity, that's not what I mean. What I mean is don't use textures that will look obviously "wrong" when used in the place you use them.
        • For instance, in the last screenshot, you put the exit door (64 wide x 72 high) on a linedef that looks like it was 96 wide x 160 high. So you end up with a vertically and horizontally-repeating door texture that looks out of place. Move the vertices in and add the door in an 8 or 16 unit wide inset and make that inset sector 72 units high and it will look more "right."
    • Some of the rooms look very large and very sparsely populated. There's nothing inherently wrong with large rooms, but if you have a large room with only a few enemies in it, that room can look very empty.
      • On the flip side, don't make a very small room and cram a ton of enemies into it. That's fine for a monster closet, but not for a room that you're meant to traverse and fight in.

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Welcome to doomworld WhyNott!

You did nice job, nice height, indoor, outdoor and ligt variation.

Pegleg allready mentioned some good point so i will say only few. There are quite a lot of texture misalignments but there is very quick fix for most of them. Highlight some texture by pointing cursor at the texture and press ctrl+a and all texture around are fix. Try to work on texturing, looking mostly on base startan texture is not very pleasant these days. Keep ip up, play other wads and try to take something from them to improve yourself.

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@Pegleg @Marlamir

Thank you guys for your feedback!

 

I was wondering if using the startan texture was okay or not. The shortcut for aligning textures will definitely be useful, thank you (I think I found it out before but I wasnt sure how to use it). I was adjusting every texture manually, which I probably the reason I didnt have the patience to go over every wall :p

 

I will see if I can do something about the enemy density and the color scheme. The pinky monster closet is actually a callback to a similar area in the doom 64, but I might have messed up the proportions some and made it too small. Either way thanks, I will probably make a V2 to adress these problems!

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2 hours ago, WhyNott said:

@Pegleg @Marlamir

Thank you guys for your feedback!

 

You're quite welcome.

 

2 hours ago, WhyNott said:

I was wondering if using the startan texture was okay or not. The shortcut for aligning textures will definitely be useful, thank you (I think I found it out before but I wasnt sure how to use it). I was adjusting every texture manually, which I probably the reason I didnt have the patience to go over every wall :p

 

There is nothing inherently wrong with using the STARTAN texture. Some people don't like it because it's one of the default textures when you make a new map in Doom Builder 2, so some people don't like how it looks because they're used to seeing it during the creation phase so, to them, the rooms look "unfinished." But no, there's nothing wrong with using STARTAN, at least, not any more than any other of the stock textures.

 

As for alignment, use auto align whenever you can. Doing it manually will drive you insane.

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I'm not startan hater and as pegleg said there is nothing wrong by using this texture. Is just not very eye candy if map using just one wall texture. Advice would be, before you start working on map choose few main texture (maybe 3-4 for example) and have fun by using them in your maps, try to make some nice looking combination.

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Definitely experiment with texture variation. Take a good look at E1M1 for instance. It has a number of textures and flats, but keeps things simple. As a result, each part of the level looks unique without lacking cohesion.

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Simple and bland map, not bad gameplay, but have some bugs in blue key arena. So, not bad for start and it's my run on your wad, buddy :D

 

 

 

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