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simonyadig

Please try out my level

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I've been making Doom levels off and on for probably 15 years now. I've recently gotten back into it after not touching a Doom editor since DEU. I'm blown away by all the different upgrades and whatnot that have been made. I'm running Kicks/JDoom, so I think that's still considered Vanilla Doom. I started this level a while ago but kept on plugging away at it.

The level is MAP01 in DoomII and I'm running JDoom with all the graphic packs.

http://www.mediafire.com/?nwn413vmloi

Try it out and tell me what you like/ don't like. Thanks.

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Well, it seems to be extremely difficult. Everything is extremely dark, but fortunately, there weren't too many monsters at the start.

But after you get the armor, its basically impossible. I had about 57 shells to kill a cyberdemon, a mastermind, and 7 arachnotrons, and there were only 2 medkits. The monsters before that had damaged me a bit (I was at 72% health) and all I get before the battle was green armor and a few shotguns. I tried to infight the monsters, but most of the time that got me killed.

The 1 time I was able to kill the mastermind and the cyberdemon, 2 arachnotrons killed me. And that was when I gave up.

On the plus side, the darkness kind of added a creepy factor to it. The trap with the chaingunner and the demon was pretty nice, too. the trap should probably be triggered when you reach the edge though, because the first time I played through, I was walking through slowly, and the floor just fell in front of me.

It shows a lot of promise, maybe just make a small ammo stockpile or something before the big fight.

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Thanks for the feedback. That outside fight is meant for you to get everyone to fight each other. You can clear it out and still come out with a decent amount of shells. Thanks again for the feedback.

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I tried playing through it again, and I didn't realize that the center box room thing closes, making a small fort. But then, I couldn't get out, so I had to noclip out. I went to the blue room door, killed the revenants, got the supercharge, but then I couldn't see what to do next.

After a bit of backtracking a door opened, I went through, killed some zombies, and came out to a huge room. I like the idea of having to outrun plasma from arachnotrons, but after you get to the end and go on the teleporter, it doesnt work. So I went back outside, started running around the thing, and got ambushed by cacodemons. I then proceded to get raped for a while, then I died. And died. And died. It seems I've hit another brick wall.

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Inside the fort, you have to push on the pillar in the middle, any of the 3 sides that have blood on it. I understand it's not the most obvious thing, but I figure if you're trapped you would just start pressing on the walls as there isn't much room anyways. One thing to note, when you are in the fort with the doors closed, there is a switch that comes out of the ground. Pressing that opens the small door that leads back inside where you came from.

Also outside the red key is hidden somewhere. You actually don't technically need that to finish teh level, but you need it to get the plasma gun which makes the arachnotron race possible.

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As for the arachnotron race part, you were doing it right. The teleporter isn't supposed to teleprt you, it opens the door to the cacos. The trick is to run all teh way back, get teh cacos to fight the arachs, and then double back to the room where the cacos came out of for the teleporter out of there.

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I made teh level so you had to actually figure out how to progress, but it seems I made it too hard. I think I'll remember that for my next level. My way of thinking was it took me how many hours to make it, so I don't want someone beating it in 10 minutes.

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That seems understandable. It also seems pretty cool. I've gotten too used to levels that have an easy to follow path. I guess sometimes it takes a newbie to keep my game play balance in check. :)

Also, if you post something, and later realize that you forgot to type something, you can edit your posts. Most people don't like multiple posts in a row.

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Didn't really like it but that's just me. I beat all the enemies with infighting but stuff wasn't intuitive, like for all I know I was supposed to run from the side to get that key, unless that was an exploit. The enclosure in the middle doesn't really serve a purpose and its not quite clear what causes it to open or close. Inside the first key door I killed the reverents then couldn't figure out what to do within my limited attention span at least. I think when the start trap floor lowers its not a repeatable action so one of the enemies could potentially get stuck down there with no way to get max kills.

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I liked it, but I made the mistake of rushing through it instead of taking my time and thinking what to do. Most obvious thing when you're confronted with a Spider Mastermind and Cyberdemon, is to get them to kill each other. After the Cyberdemon was dead, I made use of the Arachnotrons. The only thing I killed was a couple of arachnotrons in that one area.

I hated the crushing floors though... Should have used something else there, especially in the fort and to ths entrance to this area.

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Am about three quarters of the way through the map.

My thoughts:

-I got lost in the same place gggmork did. In the end I actually quit out of the level and checked what to do next in DoomBuilder. That narrow passage leading east is too easy to miss with things being so dark.

-I agree with what earthquake said about the crushing floors too.

-Generally way too dark. It could have been made just as scary by contrasting the light levels more. The funny thing is, if you have some well lit areas in your map, then the dark areas appear darker, and therefore scarier, by contrast. Whereas if everything is dark... then you can't use the dark to build anticipation or fear as the player plays through the level. Parts of it were pretty scary though.

-In places the level was a little bit unintuitive. This was not helped by the darkness of most of it. Try to make it obvious where the player must go, especially if it involves backtracking.

-Really enjoyed the big open area with the arachnotrons all shooting at me as I ran around the outside killing demons. It was really cool that if I stopped or got stopped by a demon, I pretty much died. I especially liked steering the arachnotron fire (and boy was there a lot of it) into all the cacodemons that were released later, or firing short bursts at specific arachs to stop them hitting me at key times. Very good area, and well executed. Nice. :)

-Now it could be just me here, but when you have to go fisticuffs with an archvile, specially without a beserk pack, that might be an indication that there is not enough ammo on the level. Its possible that I missed some ammo. I didn't waste much, and I infought the monsters wherever possible, and there still wasn't near enough. In the area where there is an archvile and a chaingunner, I farmed the chaingunner like 10 times to gather some ammo.

-I could not get out of the secret pit with the red key.

-Lowering the barriers on the central fort thing in the big area with the cyberdemon and the mastermind required me to switch one side of the pillar that had no switch on it. Probably put a switch there, or some indication that this is what the player must do next.

-Also, you could possibly make the blue key a little less hidden.

Anyway, nuff criticism. The gameplay element was pretty good. There were some great ideas. Texture and detailing wise, not bad. A little more ammo, a little more contrast in the lighting, a little more polish in terms of architecture, and this will be a very good level. It's pretty much there already.

Will finish off the last little bit of this one tomorrow. Heh. Will look forward to more levels in the future. :)

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A nice level. Though it isn't really fully vanilla compatible because you can get stuck down the hole that contains the red key without jumping. You also need to jump to get the DB Shotgun.

You can't jump in Vanilla Doom.

That said, a good level. But like everybody else I would say it is a bit too dark. The final battle is probably a little too difficult given that the only health between it and the Arachnotron run is a few potions. The Arachnotron run itself might be improved if some of the corners of the walkway were curved a bit more to reduce the chances of the player getting caught on them.

BTW, it seems to be a common misconception among newer mappers that Doomsday doesn't add any additional editing features to Doom. But then I guess that's because said additional editing features generally can't be included directly in a map editors config file(s) like say Boom's additional linetypes.

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Kyka said:

Am about three quarters of the way through the map.

My thoughts:

-I got lost in the same place gggmork did. In the end I actually quit out of the level and checked what to do next in DoomBuilder. That narrow passage leading east is too easy to miss with things being so dark.

-I agree with what earthquake said about the crushing floors too.

-Generally way too dark. It could have been made just as scary by contrasting the light levels more. The funny thing is, if you have some well lit areas in your map, then the dark areas appear darker, and therefore scarier, by contrast. Whereas if everything is dark... then you can't use the dark to build anticipation or fear as the player plays through the level. Parts of it were pretty scary though.

-In places the level was a little bit unintuitive. This was not helped by the darkness of most of it. Try to make it obvious where the player must go, especially if it involves backtracking.

-Really enjoyed the big open area with the arachnotrons all shooting at me as I ran around the outside killing demons. It was really cool that if I stopped or got stopped by a demon, I pretty much died. I especially liked steering the arachnotron fire (and boy was there a lot of it) into all the cacodemons that were released later, or firing short bursts at specific arachs to stop them hitting me at key times. Very good area, and well executed. Nice. :)

-Now it could be just me here, but when you have to go fisticuffs with an archvile, specially without a beserk pack, that might be an indication that there is not enough ammo on the level. Its possible that I missed some ammo. I didn't waste much, and I infought the monsters wherever possible, and there still wasn't near enough. In the area where there is an archvile and a chaingunner, I farmed the chaingunner like 10 times to gather some ammo.

-I could not get out of the secret pit with the red key.

-Lowering the barriers on the central fort thing in the big area with the cyberdemon and the mastermind required me to switch one side of the pillar that had no switch on it. Probably put a switch there, or some indication that this is what the player must do next.

-Also, you could possibly make the blue key a little less hidden.

Anyway, nuff criticism. The gameplay element was pretty good. There were some great ideas. Texture and detailing wise, not bad. A little more ammo, a little more contrast in the lighting, a little more polish in terms of architecture, and this will be a very good level. It's pretty much there already.

Will finish off the last little bit of this one tomorrow. Heh. Will look forward to more levels in the future. :)


-After reading the feedback, it's clear I made things unnecessarily confusing. It made sense in my head, but only because I made the level.

-Not sure what crushing floors you are referring to.

-I just played the level again on my new PC and the first thing I thought was how dark it is. On my old setup the level was dark, but not nearly so dark that it was hard to navigate.

-Right across the hall from the blue key door is a hidden red key door. It's technically optional but you pick up a plasma gun and ammo if you take that route. My intention was to force the player to find the red key and locate the hidden red door before they went to the big open arachnotron room. As for the red key in the little pit, I have jumping enabled so when I made it I didn't think twice about it. I'll remember that for future levels.

-In my version of JDoom, the keys glow, so again I didn't think anything of having the blue key hidden in that wood enclosure as half the room lit up from it. In fact in one of the later rooms I have a torture room and in it is a large stove. I threw a couple of red skull keys in their and the room lights up like the stove is going fullbalst. Obviously it's going to look a lot different without those effects. I'm going to post a screenshot because that was one of my favorite parts of the level.

I really appreciate everyone's feedback, especially your in depth response kyka. It's pretty obvious now what my major mistakes were. Let's see if I can translate that into a better level. I want to try to steer away from the gstone textures this time, but I always seem to end up using them.

http://i35.tinypic.com/10gg40z.jpg

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I agree with what some people said about the torches. At least in software mode they look too bright for their context. I'd use candles or maybe other glowing decorations (glowing skulls or whatever) only, in that darker area.

Vermil said:
Though it isn't really fully vanilla compatible because you can get stuck down the hole that contains the red key without jumping.

Yeah, no wonder I couldn't get out except with IDCLIP :p

Also, Doom2 terminated with a too many plats error after I passed the door that requires the blue key.

One other odd thing occurred. It took me a while to find the hidden blue skull key, and when looking for it I went from the outer area into the earlier sections, , then back outside, and a wall raised over the entrance to the outer area, when I tried going back to the earlier section again, which I couldn't open. I had to use NOCLIP there too. Although maybe there's a way to open that which I didn't find...

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I got stuck after the outside area with cyberdemon and spider mastermind. The cyber killed the spiders and mastermind but i had no ammo to kill the cyber and arch-vile.

After i found the blue key there was no way to get out from that area.
the way i came in from is blocked and when using computer map its clear that i should go back that way. Is this some kind of bug or am i missing something?

I found the red key in the ground but when i took it i couldnt get up, also havent seen any red key door.

Even with noclip i found no resonable way of progressing, i dont see any blue key door and no red door either.


Also the level is way too dark. Darkness can make some areas more creepy but its not a good idea to make the whole map too dark for u to see almost nothing. And i use risen3d with is basicly the same as jdoom, keys and torches light up but still its way too dark.

Maybe u should fix this and upload the map again and i will playtest it one more time.

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simonyadig said:

-Not sure what crushing floors you are referring to.

-I just played the level again on my new PC and the first thing I thought was how dark it is. On my old setup the level was dark, but not nearly so dark that it was hard to navigate.

The crushing floors are sector 10, which shuts the player in the northern arena and sectors 32-35, which form the walls of the fort. The actions that raise them (56 and 65) both raise and crush.

I found the map dark to very dark when played without GL lighting effects, made it hard at times to see where I should go next so I spent some of my time recklessly navigating with the automap.

I had some fun working out how to access the Red Key door and apart from wishing I had more ammo, more health and a flashlight I liked the map.

Found an untextured wall at linedef 2831 when the floor drops.

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Instead of trying to fix this one, I'm just going to start a new one from scratch. I'm going to skip trying to make any "puzzles" as I obviously suck at it. I'm going to make sure it is totally vanilla doom compatible.

Thanks again everyone for trying it out and giving me feedback. It was very helpful.

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