The Potato Project - First attempt at mapping (Now with 33% extra maps!)

 

Hi there!

 

This is my first attempt at mapping for DOOM and I've got it to the point where I'm happy to release it (hopefully there's not any horrible misalignments or other bugs!)

 

It's called The Potato Project (no real reason, but Phobos and Deimos do sort of look like giant galactic potatoes I guess), it's for limit-removing ports and it currently has three maps in it. I made this over a couple of weeks and I think they're fun but since this is my first go at anything like this, any feedback you have would be very appreciated! I know these maps aren't perfect but I hope you have fun with them anyway!

 

The difficulty for these maps are around the first few maps of Alien Vendetta (between Map01-07 not including Map06 because its much harder than the others IMO) on UV and while there are difficulty settings for HNTR and HMP, I didn't test these very much beyond checking that the maps were able to be beaten with 100% completion so they may be too difficult or too easy, I'm not sure.

 

INFO:

IWAD: DOOM2

MAPS: Map01 - Map04

Tested With: Crispy Doom, PRBoom+ (-cl2), GZDoom
Difficulty Settings: Implemented

Co-op Starts: They're in the maps but I haven't tested it, so there may be problems with the maps in co-op

Deathmatch Starts: Nope

Jumping and Crouching might break stuff so I wouldn't use them but Freelook is fine I'm sure.

Credits for the sky and the midis used are in the text file in the download.

Also in the text file are some short comments about each map which I mainly included because I always like reading them.

 

SCREENSHOTS:

 

 

 

 

 

DOWNLOAD:

>>>>HERE<<<<

 

 

UPDATES:

 

I hope you enjoy playing it and if you find any bugs or have any suggestions for improvement then please tell me!

 

 

Edited June 17, 2019 by finnks13 : Updated the OP to reflect v0.21 of the wad

There are two things to change when doing that window effect. First, don't use F_SKY1. Just use any other flat and the effect will render properly in hardware. Secondly, make the sector have zero width on the sides, and then you won't see a narrow black line. So you can make the sector a diamond or triangle, basically, rather than a rectangle. 

 

And one more thing, if Doomguy can get higher than the window, you will see a visual bug. (You can see what I'm talking about by opening the door at sector 191 and turning on idclip and standing on sector 187). There are ways around this, too, though, with a little more trickery involved.

 

Looks like fun. I'll have to take a look sometime.

Alright thank you for helping me with that tip, I'll be sure to update the map tomorrow to change it and about the effect breaking if you go higher than it, I saw it while testing but couldn't figure out why it happened. I think it shouldn't be too hard to make that impossible though as it only seemed to happen if you went on the desks in the previous room so I should be able to make them impassable and fix it.

 

I do hope you'll give it a play at some point but thank you for the advice!

Yeah ok I was having fun but I dont even feel like complimenting your map after map03s midi.... first time ive ever turned my music off. What were you thinking?

I've just updated the download link in the OP (it's also HERE if you can't be bothered to scroll back up 3 posts) with the updated version of the wad, it's not a major update but it fixes a couple of texture alignments and the visual glitch in map 3 so if you have the old version and haven't got to map 3 yet, I'd recommend updating it as it should just be an improvement over the old version (though if you've already completed the wad, don't worry about updating there SHOULDN'T be any gameplay changes in this version.)

 

If there are any glaring issues that have appeared with this that I haven't spotted, please let me know and I'll update it again.

And if you have any suggestions for improvement of the layouts or thing placement (which I think is probably the weakest thing about the set), I'd also really appreciate that.

 

@Bushpig2dope thank you for playing the maps and I'm glad to hear that you were having fun with them, and I'm very sorry that you didn't like map 3's midi (can I just ask why, does it sound really bad in the midi player you are using or did you just hate the song?), I have changed it in the update to one which is hopefully an improvement.

 

@HAK3180 thanks again for sending me an altered version of map 3 with the visual problem fixed, it really helped with fixing the problem!

Decent for a first attempt.  You can tell the mapping skills increase by level 3.  By level 6 or 7 you'll have taken the craft up a level or two. 

 

The good is that you've thought about what kind of level you want to make, and have some sort of vision.  In the first level, the backtracking is not devoid of action.  It's evident you've tried to make it interesting.

 

My thoughts are that you should focus a little more on making the levels looka little more natural.  I noted the light levels were kind of the same in some parts or drop off abruptly, and in other parts, you do have a gradient where lighter areas gradually transition to darker ones.  There seemed to be little correlation between whether a sector was bright, and whether there was an obvious source of light to make the sector bright.

 

It would look better if the outdoors areas were dark, and the indoors areas, in particular the ones you can see from the outdoors areas, are lighter, with obvious light sources.  So you'd be standing outside at night in the dark, looking into a lighter room which is lit up.  The start of Map 03 is a good example.  It should (IMO) be darkisk outside maybe with some parts lit up, and you're looking into lighter areas.  The light indoors areas would contrast nicely against the darkened external walls.  That provides a visual contrast, and makes the level more immersive.  Lighting makes a very big difference in wads and the importance of good application of lighting is often underestimated.  If you light your level "logically", then better visuals will fall into place.

 

Gameplay was OK, mostly just ploughing through enemies in front of you with a few monster closets.  In the outdoors areas, there is potential to have the player say walk through a walkway, and have enemies in either side shooting from slightly above and below, or having the player navigate some windy outdoors area, with many ambushes.  At the moment, the pattern is simply to place them in-front of the player.  I think about how the player should be attacked.  Do I want them to have fast moving projectiles coming at them from all angles?  Do I want them to be attacked from the sides?  Do I want them not to be able to go to this particular area without taking damage?  Then I place the enemies accordingly.

 

Lastly, treat mapping as if you are building a structure, and texture choice is simply the construction material.  There are some places where I think the change in texture is simply for something different to look at, rather than a logical change in the construction material the facility would be built out of  For example, if you have a brick area next to a metal one (ie, the bit past the blue key card door in MAP03), it would look better if it were brick on the outside instead of the grey metal, and it looks like a separate brick section was added on.

 

I've illustrated some things I think could be fixed below, but otherwise I thought it was pretty good.

 

 

Here in level 1, there is too much contrast between the dark and light area.  In real life, you wouldn't have such a sudden drop in brightness without some barrier in between.  This isn't the only place this happens.

 

Some texture misalignment in level 1.

 

The scrolling wall here I think doesn't work.

 

I found this secret, just for a single health bonus.  I think players should be rewarded with a bit more than that for finding a secret.  It's must my opinion though.

 

On the window sill, you can see a crack, and the heads of enemies beneath. Not sure what happened here.

 

 

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback @Borax Man!

 

With the texture misalignment and weird see-through glitch in map 3, I'll see if I can fix them so thanks for bringing them to my attention. (what sourceport are you using out of interest?)

 

The scrolling texture at the end of map 1 works on my end so I'm not sure why it's not working for you that's strange and the secret in map 2 has 15 health bonuses stacked on top of each other but I might make that more obvious or change it to a health kit because I agree with you that it doesn't look like a particularly exciting secret once you've found it.

 

I'll work more on my lighting, I do think I was fairly lazy about making it obvious that the light was coming from somewhere especially on the outside sections and I'll change some of the lighting in the maps around so it doesn't transition very abruptly, especially that room in map 1 which does look out of place now. (The nightsky was added in very near the end because I thought it looked nice but I didn't change any of the lighting after I did that which was a mistake in hindsight)

 

Thanks for all the tips (especially the ones about monster placement and texturing), I'm currently working on another level and I'll try to improve on these areas (I'll also alter the other maps to fix the things you have highlighted as well) especially with the monster placement being more interesting, its a small castle level so I should be able to get in a fair bit more of height variation inside it.

 

I'm glad that you seemed to enjoy the maps and thanks again for the feedback!

Oh, what I meant with the scrolling wall is that I think it doesn't make sense.  I can see it scroll, I just think it looks odd to have a metal wall scroll that way. 

 

You'll find that as the novelty of being able to create Doom levels wears off, your levels get better and better.  When you've made all the levels you want to make, THEN go back to MAP01, when you've got the experience and skills.

 

Look forward to seeing what you come out with next.

 

Really good wad, but in my opinion secrets are waaaaay too easy to find, especially in map01, but i really liked the secret with soulsphere on the crates. Monster placement is ok, i guess, the rooms behind the blue door in map02 are really bland, you could add something in there, at the ending of map03 in UV i didn't had any ammo, but overall wad is really good, for a first wad :) Sorry for my English

@Borax Man I see what you mean with the scrolling wall looking odd, I think it fits with that room being sort of the entrypoint for the demons in the base (the FIREBLU portal and the amount of demons there) but I may change it so its just some of lights in the room scrolling maybe, I'm not too sure. (Thanks for clarifying that it wasn't broken, I was quite confused about that!) I take your point that I should finish the episode and then polish up the earlier maps so I'll do that instead of going back to them now (I'm currently planning on 8 or 9 maps for this specifically but I may just keep going until I get bored)

 

@mateuszrusak Thanks for playing the wad, I'll try to make secrets a bit more obscure in future maps (I'm really bad at finding secrets myself so I tried to not make them too difficult) with more of them being like the crate secret in map 2 and less of there being a different wall texture with a stimpack behind it kind of them. I'm not too sure how you managed to run out of ammo in map 3, I thought I put plenty in there but I may add a box of shells to the ending section if it seems I've been to mean with the ammo. (Also, your English is pretty good don't worry about it!)

 

As an aside, I'm close to finishing the layout for map 4 and I'm just beginning to work on the lighting and then the monsters so I should be able to release an update by the end of the weekend. Here's a picture of the starting location:

plus, in map01 in the first room to the right in the begging of the level (where the stairs are) shotgun sergeant nearly every time when he gets alerted he opens door in the wall that leads to the secret, you should fix it so he couldn't open them, plus map 4 looks promising :) is it going to be some kind of castle?

@piesunisko Thanks for spotting that (I can't believe I didn't notice that happening when I was testing everything!) in map 1. And yes, Map 4 is going to be a castle level mainly because I fancied making something which wasn't a techbase.

I recorded some complevel 2 FDAs: PotatoProject_fdas.zip

 

There's lots of shooting stuff from/through doorways, but there's enough other sorts of fighting that it wasn't too bad.  I had a good time, and was shocked that I survived MAP02 with all the damage I took from some nasty traps. I punched at a misaligned crate texture at one point. I like the nukage area behind the red door in MAP03, how that big wall opens up, and the vile stuff. Could use less rad suits on UV probably. I agree that the music for MAP03 is pretty odd. ;)

 

@Benjogami I've just watched the FDA for Map01, and I'll watch the others in a bit.

Thank you so much for these, they'll be very helpful for when I update these maps soon. I agree (and I noticed this while testing, especially for Map01) that there is a lot of shooting stuff through doorways but I'm trying to make that happen less in the maps I'm making now and for when I alter the three maps I already have. I'll reduce the number of radsuits in Map03, I just didn't want anyone to run out so I erred on the side of caution. I'll also take out the invisible wall on the window on Map01 so there's a second way to get that secret I think because I didn't realise you could make that jump and you looked slightly confused in the demo so I'll change that as well.

 

Did you record these in v0.1 or v0.11 (the .wad should say somewhere) just so I'm sure I watch these in the right version, though if you recorded these in v0.1 I do agree that the music is a bit odd and I have changed it (though if not, I'm sticking to what's there because I really like the original version of that song and the midi version I've got is almost half as good :D)

3 minutes ago, finnks13 said:

Did you record these in v0.1 or v0.11?

I recorded on v0.1. The midi in v0.11 is much better. :)

@Benjogami Just finished watching all of the demos thank you very much for sending them, they were really fun to watch!

 

I'm as shocked as you are that you managed to get through Map02 on the first try with how mean some of the traps became (though the revenants and imps which trapped you in the small hallway directly after the red key door are meant to spawn in as you go into that very dark room and press the switch so I'm not sure how that happened), though I was surprised when you ran straight past the teleporting trap outside once everything started spawning in - that gave me a good laugh! I'll fix the alignment on the crate you spotted as well and I may move the trigger for the trap after the red key door slightly further away so a similar thing to what happened to you won't be as easy to occur.

 

Though I have to say with Map03 (thanks for sticking with it, I'd have probably given up after the death in the red key room to the archvile trap personally), it does seem much harder than I intended and there seems to be much less ammo (especially shells) than I thought (I might have deleted some by mistake) and there were a couple of things which your demo highlighted which I will fix - the grate in the first area being able to be walked through (even though it doesn't seem to help at all) and the archvile zapping you through the portal were very unintentional so I will fix those! Is there any specific area in the map which you think could be toned down a bit in terms of difficulty? Because I think it seems much harder than I anticipated (and want the map to be) when you don't know exactly what's coming.

 

Thanks again for the demos!

52 minutes ago, finnks13 said:

Though I have to say with Map03 (thanks for sticking with it, I'd have probably given up after the death in the red key room to the archvile trap personally), it does seem much harder than I intended and there seems to be much less ammo (especially shells) than I thought (I might have deleted some by mistake) and there were a couple of things which your demo highlighted which I will fix - the grate in the first area being able to be walked through (even though it doesn't seem to help at all) and the archvile zapping you through the portal were very unintentional so I will fix those! Is there any specific area in the map which you think could be toned down a bit in terms of difficulty? Because I think it seems much harder than I anticipated (and want the map to be) when you don't know exactly what's coming.

The nukage vile fight that I died twice to is the only part that could be nerfed, I think, and even then it felt like it was my fault, especially the second time :D Perhaps you could simply add some cover up above where the mancs were so the player can avoid the distant vile snipe, and also some cover down in the nukage, or perhaps reshape the platforms next to the manc area to be more friendly for fighting among and behind, like I eventually did in my successful attempt. The impassible gaps between the platforms make it kinda awkward to hide among them (but also potentially powerful for the prepared player, if they shoot the monsters through those gaps).

 

I thought the ammo balance was good. I did guess that the passable grate was a bug, but I kinda like it. It adds some non-linearity, a different way to approach that area.

 

 

 

47 minutes ago, Benjogami said:

I did guess that the passable grate was a bug, but I kinda like it. It adds some non-linearity, a different way to approach that area.

To be honest, I'm tempted to leave it in after seeing it because it doesn't seem like it really breaks the level despite looking really silly and I don't think it really helped you going through there so I might leave it in (or just forget to fix it, which is honestly more likely).

 

I'll probably add some cover to the nukage archvile fight in the nukage (possibly a couple of high crates or maybe something slightly more thematic) and I'll change the shapes of the mancubus platforms so you can run through all of the gaps and use them for cover, as I didn't even consider using them for that purpose in the fight. I may also take out one of the revenants which come with it (or maybe make it so the archvile teleports later as it currently teleports in second so it doesn't have as much time to resurrect stuff) but I'll give it some thought. Thanks for your feedback :)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/439084561

 

I play this at 2:20:30 into this playtest livestream.

 

 

1

37 minutes ago, Suitepee said:

I play this at 2:20:30 into this playtest livestream.

 

Damn, I wish I noticed you were streaming so I could have caught it live and provided defences of my maps insightful commentary. Thanks for playing it all the way through with the commentary, it was very interesting to watch it through and see what you did (I'm especially happy that you thought the weird hell boiler thing at the end of Map03 was cool, it's honestly my favourite thing about that map) and I'm glad you seemed to enjoy it.

 

Since you seemed to wonder how to get the soulsphere on Map02, there is a small gap in the wall where the cacodemon is in the crate room which you can shoot through to open a switch which lowers a crate with it on.

 

I'm planning on 8 maps in total and I hope you'll give them a go as well. But even if you don't thanks again for streaming them :)

Hiya all,

I've just finished Map04 of the wad (DOWNLOAD: HERE or in the OP) and very slightly updated the other 3 maps (there's no significant changes so if you've already played them, you don't need to again).

 

Map04 is a shorter castle themed map with such fantastic features like:

- A really short hedge maze

- Bookshelves

- Some zombies

- A fancy bedroom for the Baron of the Castle

And much, much more!

 

SCREENSHOTS:

 

 

 

 

I recently played through ksutra.wad and really liked the gimmick of Map27, where you start with only a pistol and beserk and slowly get the various weapons as you progressed through the map with each room seemingly being designed around the weapon you're given. I thought that it might be fun (and a challenge for my current mapping skills) to attempt a similar idea (that being the slow weapon progression with each room being designed around the weapon gotten at the start) for myself. I think I've done a decent job of it, though I'll let you be the judge of that!

 

I will say that the ammo in the map is fairly tight if you don't find the secret ammo cache though there is enough to kill everything on UV so hopefully you don't have to go round punching every demon you see (though punching pinkies might help a bit). Though if everyone who plays it seems to completely run out of ammo, I'll add a bit more in with a small patch.

 

I hope you enjoy trying the new map!

 

(As an aside, I've noticed that whenever I have put spoilers or quotes in any of my posts they seem quite messed up. Is that happening on your end as well and have I been an idiot and not noticed the right way to do it? Thanks!)

1 hour ago, finnks13 said:

Hiya all,

I've just finished Map04 of the wad (DOWNLOAD: HERE or in the OP) and very slightly updated the other 3 maps (there's no significant changes so if you've already played them, you don't need to again).

 

Map04 is a shorter castle themed map with such fantastic features like:

- A really short hedge maze

- Bookshelves

- Some zombies

- A fancy bedroom for the Baron of the Castle

And much, much more!

 

SCREENSHOTS:

 

 

 

 

I recently played through ksutra.wad and really liked the gimmick of Map27, where you start with only a pistol and beserk and slowly get the various weapons as you progressed through the map with each room seemingly being designed around the weapon you're given. I thought that it might be fun (and a challenge for my current mapping skills) to attempt a similar idea (that being the slow weapon progression with each room being designed around the weapon gotten at the start) for myself. I think I've done a decent job of it, though I'll let you be the judge of that!

 

I will say that the ammo in the map is fairly tight if you don't find the secret ammo cache though there is enough to kill everything on UV so hopefully you don't have to go round punching every demon you see (though punching pinkies might help a bit). Though if everyone who plays it seems to completely run out of ammo, I'll add a bit more in with a small patch.

 

I hope you enjoy trying the new map!

 

(As an aside, I've noticed that whenever I have put spoilers or quotes in any of my posts they seem quite messed up. Is that happening on your end as well and have I been an idiot and not noticed the right way to do it? Thanks!)

 

Looks nice, will give it a try once i finish making my own wad, plus i will record a demo of all 4 maps :)