SILENTAGE.wad, my first DooM effort

Feel free to remove if considered spam.

Hello, fellow DooMers. First post here.
I made a single-level PWAD that I thought was pretty fun, but I'll leave you to be the judge of that.
It's a regular, basic, bland level.
No DeHackEd, no new textures, I only changed D_DM2TTL and D_RUNNIN.

Speaking of, here are the song changes:
D_RUNNIN is Last by Nine Inch Nails
D_DM2TTL is Mr. Self Destruct by Nine Inch Nails
Of course, in glorious MIDI form.

I made it roughly over the course of a week.
It's my first level that I've finished, but I have a lot more in my folder, that's for sure.
Please give constructive criticism where needed, I would love to know what I could improve on.
The only thing I can think of is that I maybe should have added more ammo pickups, and maybe the secrets are a bit too difficult to find, too.

There are 7 secrets, placed all over the map.
Soulsphere, armor (or armour), BFG, you can find it!

Oh, yeah. Here are the monster counts.

ITYTD/HNTR: 103
HMP: 122
UV/N: 147

Sorry if the difficulty scaling is a bit wonky, as I said, this is my first level completed.
Also, I only really playtested it on HMP because I'm used to that difficulty, so, that's my bad.

Here are some screenshots so you know what you're getting;

Monster counts are different because this was from a version where I hadn't changed the balancing, but the architecture is the same.

Tested on;
GZDoom
ZDoom
Zandronum
EDGE (works just fine, though it's kind of a weird sourceport in general)
Chocolate Doom (lifts don't work, probably shouldn't use this one)
Pr/GLBoom+ (lifts don't work either, but at least it doesn't crash!)
Runs on all of these, but as you can see by the errors, ZDoom or a deriviative is most recommended. Sorry if that turns you purists off.

Hope you enjoy!

SILENTAGE.zip

You don't appear to have included a download link. When you do I'll be happy to play it and give you some feedback!

Oh, my bad. I'll add that real quick.

You should be able to download it now.

3 minutes ago, VisionThing said:

You don't appear to have included a download link. When you do I'll be happy to play it and give you some feedback!

I think you can download it now. Just realized I might have to quote to give you a notification, but whatever. I'm not much of a forum user.

Played in GZDoom running Beautiful Doom.

Screenshots:

Overall a decent map that suffers a bit by having slightly bland looking corridors without much variation in lighting or height (I've been there, don't worry), however there were a few cool bits of visual detail and some nice set pieces here and there. A couple of texture issues (missing doors) as per the screenshots, and I found I got softlocked near the end by the Archvile encounter where I couldn't get back out for a bit more room. That may have been a deliberate choice on your part. Monster encounters were mostly fun and you made good use of Chaingunners as potential infighting tools. For a first map, I will say that it is good, but keep practicing because there are some areas that need improvement. I am not the authority on Doom, and far from the giants of mapping, just trying to highlight some common areas that some people will agree need a bit of work. Music was cool too! Keep it up, with a bit more practice and refinement you could make something really solid I think.

i did a full UV run on your map and I'll say it right now: It has great potential, I loved the music and the sprawling level design which made you think you were near the end but pleasantly surprised to find more, the fights were challenging but fair, i found that the ammo and health pickups were placed very well as i never had to run around the map looking for more ammo, the secrets were pretty good, semi-noticeable in some places but that's okay considering they are your first mapping attempts.

Overall the combat was great, i loved how most rooms seemed to be setup in ways like Ambushes, and some monster closets too. The design choices i saw seem to lean a bit more towards DOOM 1's design rather then 2, which I'm always a sucker for lol. I loved the texture work the most, since most people's first attempt (including my own) never bothered to change the level's heights and in your case it adds a lot of diversity to each room, The lighting effects were very well done, Aside from a few Door textures not working properly, and a Hom effect towards the Dark room with the pinkies and the Lava pit, (Gzdoom engine)

overall i have to give this one a solid 5/10, it could be improved a bit

Like for instance the Baron of hell fight i had trouble moving around and dodging him in the forest segment, and in some cases could cheese it easily since he couldn't hit me through a tree but i could hit him.

really great work and i would look forward to what you can make in the future! lots of potential!

Hello! I've had fun exploring your map, but I also had a lot of feedback for your encounter design, vis a vis 'the door problem'. Live commentary and playthrough below! Hope you make more!

The good

You have a basic but good layout, the maps does have a good flow.

The bad (I hope this will help you)

You should stick to a theme, the part where you switch form a tech-base to outdoor then cave and back to a tech base does work, but switching from a tech-base to a more primitive stone with wooden door does not.

Your doors are flush against the walls, instead of using one sector for your doors you should be using 3, the middle one is used for the door and the 2 sector connecting to the rooms should be used as a frame. Also in your outdoor area they simply disappear into the sky.

More of your room fell flat and lack details, you did add a few decoration in a few place but most sectrs need some details, you could take you current map and work form there.

You should add some traps especially when picking up keys and higher tier weapons.

Keep on maping

Not too shabby at all, mate. Your map's layout is interesting, progression is all right but could use a little work, your combat's a bit humdrum but not too slap-dash. It could use a few more ambushes and traps though. Your pickup distribution/balancing is all right as I didn't feel too OP at any given point which is a good sign (ya can't be too generous). Honestly, my biggest criticism would simply be the design and texture work as it's all a little bland and bare bones. Like I said, the map's layout is decent, but all the rooms are pretty empty and there's very little decoration, props, landmarks or DoomCute to be found which makes it a tad dull to look at. Don't be afraid to spend more time making your map look interesting. Anyways, this is a good first outing. Well done, mate. Welcome to Doomworld ;^)

One thing I forgot to mention about this one is that I thought the rocket launcher secret was implemented very well. Almost didn't see it!

Some points you should focus on working on, for your next levels:

- Add space in front and on the back of doors and then lower them, like in pic related. You're clearly limiting yourself to 128px height rooms because you didn't seem to find a way to make doors not tile vertically -- this is the way to fix that.

- A BFG, especially one so easy to find early on, is very unnecessary for a level this chill.

- Both lower and upper unpeg the walls on windows to align them properly, like this.

- In the first outdoors area, there are a ton of pinkies blocked behind trees, that would never kill me in a million years. They're harmless meat walls that just slow you down.

- It's very easy to miss the blue key and then teleport back to the start, requiring the player to go all the way back to grab it, in case. Also, in the same room, the door you use to get in doesn't open from it.

- About the layout and design:

  - The map is extremely flat. There's pretty much no height variation anywhere.

  - Every room is just door > square > door. I'd recommend trying to make more areas that have seamless transitions, and overall more dynamic to the design.

  - Every encounter is a block of monsters in front of the player. Gameplay's more engaging when you're being attacked from several directions.

These are all average beginner map problems that almost everyone was guilty of when they started out. The earlier you know and try to fix them, the better. Congrats on the work, and for having 140+ monsters on your first level

Did a playthrough of this.  Not a bad first map, although there's definitely some room for improvement.

Things I didn't mention in the video:

- the lifts can be made compatible with Vanilla/Chocolate Doom by making sure the switch linedefs have the same tag as the corresponding lift sector.  

- There isn't really a use for the chainsaw secret; there's enough ammo on the map it's not worth using.  I'd suggest swapping the chainsaw for a Berserk.

hey, was a fun little map to go through. first maps are always fun to play :)

took an FDA demo in dsda-doom 0.18.0 on UV difficulty if you're interested, wasn't going fast by any means, was more just looking around.  any pauses i took were to take screenshots. 

my big takeaways of things to improve was definitely monster placement. about 1/4 of encounters had monsters placed too tight on one another, causing a lot of stuck monsters making some of the fights trivial. (I realize most of your testing was on HMP,  so not sure how this affects that difficulty) 

the door/back of door textures issue which a good amount of people above me already pointed out, some HOM effects on floor textures. 

also I have a bunch of screenshots saved, didn't wanna spam the post with them so DM if you want them and I can send 'em over! :) 

looking forward to a new version/ more maps from you my friend! cheers.

silentage-s-FDA.zip

Had fun with its simplistic Style.

The dark Areas where to dark for my taste, but somehow GZDoom doesn't lights up the place with the Chaingun, but this must be my fault haha
Also felt down where Clippy did haha
Make the Boundries impassable :)