3 level mapset i made, please playtest.

I know my first maps were not much special but i want to get better the more maps i make.
This is a 3 level map set i have been working on for the latest week or so. Note that map 01 is basicly the same as my previous map 4 but has been updated and error fixed and should now run fine with all ports aswell as doom2.exe.

If u have the time please play trough my levels and tell me what u think and what i should change/improve and what to think of for future levels.

These levels may look a bit outdated by todays standards but im really trying my best to make them fun and challenging. Its no huge levels with thousands of monsters or with insane detail but maybe an ok attempt in the start of my mapping career?













http://www.sendspace.com/file/p5gtfm

edit* i made the pillars with revenants taller and 25% bigger and changed the problem with the pillars around the red key not lowering correctly and im now working on getting rid of the HOM error in map3 then i will re-upload the wad.

edit* i think i have fixed all errors now and i also added a new room to map 3, making the map a little longer.

edit* fixed yellow key door in map 3 was able to open without key and some texture fixes in map1 and 2 and a missed linedef action for map2

please download the wad again and tell me if u find more errors/things to fix before i release it to newstuff archive.

Map 1 was had pretty nice gameplay, even if the level looked a little sparce, you should try not to rely on switches so much and should try more walkover triggers or things that make it more obvious what they do.
On the second map I got stuck after killing the revnants on the pedestals (which was pretty easy, you might want to make the pedatstals bigger to make it a little harder) and presed all the 4 switches, but they didnt seem to do anything and I was stuck with no keys and only key doors to go through.
I only played a few seconds on the third map before I was killed by a damaging floor, but straight away in the start area, the inset wall on the left had a masive HOM bug on it. also just before the damaging floor where I got killed there was 3 chaingunners on a ledge, who didnt even fire 1 shot before I had killed them all due to their ledge being too small again.

Overall an improvement, but still has some minor things so iron out, I look forward to seeing your next set of maps/ improved versions of these. good work

Ok you say u got stuck in map2. did any of the pillars around the red key lower or none at all? i will check this right away and also make the pillars higher and bigger. i dont see that HOM error u mentioned, just regular sky there. Try to play map 3 trough the end. The blood pools are supposed to be damaging but there are suits available.

what port did u play them with?

- i see now that the switches lower the stones around the red key correctly only if u press them in order. this should not be but im not really sure how to fix it when u press them randomly.
i will look into this now and if it dosent work i will redo the area somehow

Map1) Nothing major here, typical newbie stuff. Watch your offsets, when you change a ceiling the textures must get a Y offset to match the surrounding textures. Also, pick flats that match your wall decor a little better. Using the same ceiling flat as the main room looks goofy. Speaking of flats this map could use some vertical movement! Map2 and 3 don't suffer from this as much.


map2) gameplay more refined here, and you're experimenting with lighting, that's good. Watch your pillars, when you make a pillar, don't raise a sector to the floor or ceiling, make a sector, then delete the insides. You're left with solid lines and a real pillar. These 'voids' are more useful cause you can build inside them, like wall decorations or cages. Otherwise just more newbie stuff you'll learn with time.

map3) I had fun with this one, it reminded me of my old maps, I liked to make the player trudge through nasty stuff for a while. Yeah, theres a giant HOM in the start room, (I'm using zdoom) and two more in a later section, near the Yellow door. I think they're supposed to be skyboxes but they're not working. This maps isn't as flat as the other two, but it's pretty dark considering all the torches around. Remember when planning your lighting that torches should give off light, so placing many of them in a room would brighten it up.

bullsquid said:

These levels may look a bit outdated by todays standards but im really trying my best to make them fun and challenging. Its no huge levels with thousands of monsters or with insane detail but maybe an ok attempt in the start of my mapping career?

Thousands of monsters? Insane detail? You might be surprised but that's not why some people play Doom. So by all means, this is a great start. And even if you don't get into detail or slaughtermaps there's nothing wrong with that. Just enjoy yourself and stick with it, if it's worth it.

Use3D said:

Map1) Nothing major here, typical newbie stuff. Watch your offsets, when you change a ceiling the textures must get a Y offset to match the surrounding textures. Also, pick flats that match your wall decor a little better. Using the same ceiling flat as the main room looks goofy. Speaking of flats this map could use some vertical movement! Map2 and 3 don't suffer from this as much.


map2) gameplay more refined here, and you're experimenting with lighting, that's good. Watch your pillars, when you make a pillar, don't raise a sector to the floor or ceiling, make a sector, then delete the insides. You're left with solid lines and a real pillar. These 'voids' are more useful cause you can build inside them, like wall decorations or cages. Otherwise just more newbie stuff you'll learn with time.

map3) I had fun with this one, it reminded me of my old maps, I liked to make the player trudge through nasty stuff for a while. Yeah, theres a giant HOM in the start room, (I'm using zdoom) and two more in a later section, near the Yellow door. I think they're supposed to be skyboxes but they're not working. This maps isn't as flat as the other two, but it's pretty dark considering all the torches around. Remember when planning your lighting that torches should give off light, so placing many of them in a room would brighten it up.

map 1 : where do u mean i should change Y offset? Can u be more specific on wich rooms or parts i need to change. And what ceiling texture should i change? what do u consider the main room to be?
sorry if i am a little slow but i dont fully understand all stuff in doom builder yet.

map 2 : when u say delete the insides i dont really know what u mean.
i have made the pillars rise up from the floor as u said but what should i do to delete the insides and make them solid? i thought they were solid already

map 3: about that error, i wanted to make a window with a sky texture outside but i must be doing something wrong then.
someone else told me to build a sector outside the window and put sky texture on the floor and ceiling and then lower the ceiling to the floor of that sector but if that dosent work then what am i doing wrong and how do i make it look like a window with sky outside?

i playtested it now with gzdoom and regular zdoom and the bug seems to only appear in software rendering. anyway how do i get rid of it?

thx for testing.

bullsquid said:

map 1 : where do u mean i should change Y offset? Can u be more specific on wich rooms or parts i need to change. And what ceiling texture should i change? what do u consider the main room to be?
sorry if i am a little slow but i dont fully understand all stuff in doom builder yet.

map 2 : when u say delete the insides i dont really know what u mean.
i have made the pillars rise up from the floor as u said but what should i do to delete the insides and make them solid? i thought they were solid already

In map 1 you just have to go through, probably easiest in 3D mode and check every single texture that doesn't align with the textures on either side of it, if it doesn't then you have to manually move it up or down to allign it and make it look right. As far as I know the doom builder auto align only moves textures across the X axis so is of limited use here (please correct me if i'm wrong). And you could just do with changing the floor and ceiling flats (textures) in some rooms so they don't all look so samey. But overall nice gameplay, the level design reminded me of episode 1, especially the poison area before the chaingun, and the large green area with the cacodemon after th chaingun.

In map 2, what he means by deleting your pillar sectirs is to simply click on the sector that you have raised to the cieling/lowered to the floor and press delete, unless the pillar does something special like lowers or raises. This just makes your level seem a little more profesional and also lowers your sector count slightly, which is very useful if you are working to the constraints of vanilla doom.

I will have a look at those sky boxes a little later and see what I can sugest.

how should i make the window look out to the sky without getting an error? plz explain with pictures if u can (using doom builder)

bullsquid said:

someone else told me to build a sector outside the window and put sky texture on the floor and ceiling and then lower the ceiling to the floor of that sector...

It sounds like you're doing the right thing with the skybox, just make sure the sector you've lowered with the sky ceiling doesn't touch the floor, which will make Doom draw a column there. Make it like 8 units off the floor. I don't use Doom Builder so...

Also, everything you want to achieve here has already been done in the original levels. You should crack open e1m1 or map1 and check out how things are done. Using the original maps as a guide you should be able to pull off all the basics.

MAP16 'The Suburbs' of Doom 2 is a pretty simple hap but is quite good for seeing how certain things work, such as skyboxes and monsters teleporting in. Just thought I would mention that particular map incase you ever want to find out how to do that.

I liked the gameplay in this, I died about as many times in this as I did in the first 2 missions of DVII.

Your deco could use some work though, although I found that it got incrementally better, Map03 being the best. I believe this was also the map you stopped using the same ceiling texture over and over again.

Overall I give it a 5/10, maybe, as mentioned above, you used more floor triggers, it would've been higher. I WILL look forward to more of your maps though.

Oh and, by the way, try using the auto-align textures in 3d Mode, I noticed many of the walls were kind of blocky.

When u say use floor triggers do u mean like i enter a room and a wall opens with some monsters or what exactly should i do to make it even better

and about the ceiling texture. in many areas in the levels i just cant find anything else to fit as ceiling texture besides brown,grey textures

bullsquid said:

When u say use floor triggers do u mean like i enter a room and a wall opens with some monsters or what exactly should i do to make it even better

and about the ceiling texture. in many areas in the levels i just cant find anything else to fit as ceiling texture besides brown,grey textures

These levels would be more awkwared with floor triggers, the switches work fine, even if there are quite allo of them and with some it isnt particuarly obvious that they have actually done anything. TBH unless you are particuarly attatched to these maps you should consider leaving them and moving on, as they are very good maps considering that you are still learning (especially MAP03) but you could probably do with just trying new things in a new set of maps, perhaps take a look at your favorite levels from the original id games levels and see how they did certain things, you could even try getting inspiration from other peoples wads or completely different games as all inspiration is likely to be good inspiration.

Yes i will start to work on new levels for the set as soon as i get some ideas.

Now the skyboxes in map3 seems to work fine but u can still shoot into them wich is not what is intended. how do i make them work like a regular sky where the shots just dissapear?

Sendspace says it is at maximum capacity so I can't download the updated version just yet, however I've just played through the first map again, and in the area with the damaging floor and a [] shaped walkway raised above it (in your third screen shot) when you fall into the pit in the middle for the stimpacks and then lower the lift with the switch, there are switch textures on the walls obscured by the lifts. after further investigation it turned out they did nothing, but at this point the floor had knocked me down to 17% health so it was quite a costly misplaced texture.

Also you may want to use something other than Risen 3D to test your maps as most people use vanilla doom, zdoom, boom or skulltag.

I see what u mean , its a texture misplacement and i will change it right away. thx for pointing that out.

Try downloading the new version again and try out map3.

If u find more errors or things to change plz tell me.

Its looking allot better now, and the monster placement is pretty good. 2 small things, your skybox, whilst perfect from I think pretty much anywhere that you can go, there is an ugly strip around the edge, and the sky repeats itself on the floor of your skybox. Often it is better to make a small outdoor area beyond the window and then put the skybox around that, make sure the outside area has atleast a low wall around it. If you want to know how to do this then you could have a look at doom levels like the factory, or the suburbs, or I have recently put a demo level for my megawad up which has the outside skybox thingamajig on it if you want to look at that. Then if you want any aditional help I can run through exactly how it was made. Secondly, you may want to play around with monsters being deaf, as it can be quite annoying having shot something and being able to hear a monster in somewhere unacessabele shouting its head off. also it give away its position and so makes it less of a danger and lessens suspense. Don't get me wrong in the right place the sound of a monster can be scarier than the actual encounter. (this isn't so bad in map03, but map02 and especially map01 suffer from it.)Overall it is coming along nicely, and deffinatly don't give up on mapping, if these are just your second batch then you are doing pretty damn well.

I made a small room outside and put sky texture on floor and ceiling and lowered the ceiling so it almost touches the floor.
i dont know any other way to do this and make it look right, also u can shoot at the sky wich you're not supposed to but i dont know how i should get rid of it. It looks better then before anyway, no HOM error.

And the reason many monsters on my levels are deaf is that i want them to stay on their spot of the map and not come at the player all at once. that would screw up many of the fights.

Working on the 4th map of the set now, i think its gonna turn out pretty nice :)

What I meant is that not enough monsters are deaf, or if you want them to wake up during a certain fight so cant make them deaf, make some linedefs block sound.

If you wan I could make a small map to show you what I mean about the skybox in an outside area, and then upload it to send space. Would that help?

Sure, do it.
and please explain how u did it.

I have taken the start room from your third level and built a skybox in it using a small outside area. It makes the level look a little neater, also the sky shouldn't be shootable.

I built a sector outsie the window that was larger than the window, I then made the walls a normal texture (can be any, whatever suits your level) and the same with the floor. I then put the sky texture on the ceiling and inserted a small sector bordering three walls visable from the window, lowered it to a suitable height and put the sky texture on th cieling of that one and left the walls of that sector without a texture. This created a skybox where only sky is visable through the window, but if someone manages to get onto the window sill it looks like a small courtyard with a wall.
The file is here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/4mkq8l
I suggest you play it, and noclip onto the windowsill and have a look, also try shooting the sky as I am 90% certain it wont be shootable. Then have a look at it in doom builder, in both normal mode and 3D mode to really get an idea of how I achieved it. If you want any more infomation on it just ask.

thx for the help.
works fine now :) and i know how to make it work in the future.

btw if anyone is interested i have nearly finished my new map and i will be adding it to the map set as soon i bug checked and playtested it a few more times.

Thats ok, glad I could help.
Good luck with your new maps.