I making a wad and I would love some feedback about it

[Tunasz]

Hello!
I am new to mapping and I am working on a megawad for a mod called complex doom.

The wad will be called: "Complexity".
I tested it with zandronum3.0. It has 3D floors, I don't know if it requires something.

I doesn't used dynamic lighting in it.

Compatibility is set for me to default.

• Freelook, jump, crouch are allowed and needed at some point.
• It's in DOOM2: UDMF format.
• IWAD is DOOM II.

The wad starts for now on map01 and ends on map04.
map05 is just a test map
Difficulty: I would say medium. I could had pistol start every map so not that difficulty.

I think it's a run and gun wad.

I implemented difficulties so less monsters will show up on lower difficulties.

My wad can be found here: https://allfearthesentinel.net/zandronum/wads.php?user=3796

The current wad's name is: complexity_v0_4_3.wad

I would be glad if I can get feedback because I can change stuff based on the feedbacks.

[Jadwick]

I played this on GZDoom 4.0, UV with smoothdoom and bolognese, with jumping and crouching enabled.

 

MAP01
Use of 3D floors here was impressive, but the starting rooms and hallway feels a little amateurish compared to what you did in the crate storage room.A little bit of ceiling variation would help. You have either 128 height rooms or very cramped little hallways. You also have a theme clash with the base-y stuff clashing with the bfg/archvile trap room, and the mancubus/chaingunner room. Also, compared to how much work you put in the crate room, the rest of the level feels undecorated.

 

I'm not a fan of "doom furniture" type of level design like beds and chairs and things, I did it as well when I started mapping, but it really just doesn't fit in my opinion. I prefer the abstract type of level design, but it's okay here. That office chair though is neat.

 

The main event here is obviously the crate room. Clearing out the chaingunners on the shelves really slowed the pace down, and there are a lot of them. They aren't really that hard, just tedious. If you want to make them a surprise spread them out more. Otherwise, I think imps would be a better replacement for them, since I didn't figure out how to get to the higher levels and get their guns anyway.

 

The fight after the switch in the crate room is okay, claustrophobic, but do-able. Suggestion here, maybe move the invulnerability to inside the crate room somewhere, because I went through the hard fight before I even found it, and the rest of the level isn't hard enough to warrant it.

 

I found 5/8 secrets.

 

MAP02
More theme mixed stuff with base textures and castle-y textures. Maybe too much SHAWN? I over-used that when I started, and someone told me the same thing. Another texture related thing I saw a tip about, often when changing floor/cieling textures make sure you have a height variation. It adds character and looks more natural.

 

More doom furniture in a room filled with hitscanners. A BFG blast, from the secret in MAP01, clears a good portion of them out. Neat looking rocket outside.

Big acid vat SHAWN room. This room feels big enough to use your movement in a good fight, but the enemy variety/placement is lacking. The mancubi didn't even shoot at me. You could make this room a dead simple style arena with mancubi triggering after you entered the room if you wanted. But they would need to be on lower, smaller, pillers (or vats) so they could shoot at you.

 

Then wolf ss guys in the corridors beyond. It's about a hard a theme-break as the texture switch here too. From tech to castle/wood. SS guys and archviles. Archviles are kind of like a spice, and it is crafty to add them to a room where you've just cleared out a bunch of lower-level enemies, but you don't want to throw them left-and-right at the player. Which leads me to something else too...

 

I'm writing these notes between levels, and so far I've noticed the levels are just kind of squarish room with doors to other squarish rooms and so on. You'll have a singular fight and move on to the next room. Again, I did this as well when I started mapping. You end up with a very linear level, even if you have switches in one room open doors clear across the map (which is also not good). Some people like the straight-forward style of maps, but I prefer the more interconnected, open levels. I don't know if this is cliche or not, but look at the first episode of doom. You can tell rooms are separate but they often have multiple entrances and connect to each other. As you move through the level you'll see a place you'll get to later, or parts of the level will open up to lead you back to somewhere you were earlier, which are now repopulated with enemies.

 

Anyways, the rest of the level is lots of tough monsters, but you can mostly fight them through a door and blast them with rockets or spam the bfg.

 

MAP03

OH! I almost felt like an idiot talking about square rooms and corridors, because this is a big open map. It's alright, but still very square. There is LOTS of health everywhere, easiest map so far. The room with the cacos is too cramped to fight in, so I resorted to just door camping again. I cleared the park area of enemies next, and the archville luncheon area. You really like those chaingunners don't you? This map could use some projectile enemies scattered around throwing fireballs at you from different directions in that big open area, like the downtown map in doom2.

 

I did the outside ring next with the cyberdemons and spiders. You have enough cover to easily fight them, and more than enough cells. The bit with the rockets and zombies was a good bit of fun. The switches behind the spiders, that lowered the big gate out of the map gave me enough of an idea of what I needed to be doing and where I needed to go to leave, so good job there.

 

But the bad part of this map is the copy-pasted buildings. Very repetitive, and one of them has a red door. I went through them all and flushed the toilets. I'm not sure if I needed to. Very thin 3D floors for your gear cabinets. You could also just move the items close enough to the end of the cabinets so you could bump them, crawling for them isn't really necessary.

 

Lots of chaingunners sums up the rest of this map. Still my favorite.

 

MAP04

Big flat map with spawning enemies enerywhere. I just rushed through as fast as possible, got two keys, and ran around opening the buildings without even shooting the monsters. There is no cover from the archvile attacks, just the tree sprites. This one is the worst of the four.

I didn't even look for secrets.

OTHER STUFF
I didn't find the music added much other than file size for the first two levels, and then two of the tracks were starcraft music, so I'll take this opportunity to mention licensing. It's best not to use copyrighted stuff for your mods. I cannot say however that the doom community is the best at that. Mostly I try to find public domain and Creative Common licensed material for sounds and music.

You have an abundance of health and ammo in the levels, if you are making this for co-op in zandronum large amounts of ammo isn't so bad, but overall the maps are fairly easy, with certain large difficulty spikes.

 

Monsters; lots of chaingunners and archviles for 4 maps. Lots and LOTS of chaingunners.

Try and make your doors uniform. With similar movement speeds, wait times, and approaches on either side. I usually use a 16 wide sector on either side of a big door, and a 8 wide sector on small ones.

Lastly, don't take this all too harshly. Criticism and practice is important to becoming good at modding, but so is encouragement. So, if you like mapping, please keep mapping. Doom is still around because people like you find it and learn how to mod it.

Edited May 10, 2019 by Jadwick

[Tunasz]

Thank you for the reply! I will try to improve my maps. The 4th map is completable but I wanted to modify it. Sadly I still not sure how. The first map mancuby room is like I don't know what I should do there. But I will try to figure it out.

And About the music I just don't know what I can use. I mostly try to use songs which doesn't have singing in it.