My first map

[Santino]

Hello, this is my first doom map, I had little help from another mapper because I'm 11 years old.

your advice is appreciated!!!

 

http://www.mediafire.com/file/13lr5o7j7vlbpti/santi03.wad/file

[Arrowhead]

Just played this now. A very respectable first attempt for someone so young. If you don't mind, I will point out some small things I saw that could be fixed:

1) The 4 chaingunners on the ledge seem to be partly clipped into the roof - this seems to make it difficult for them to target the player as well.

2) The door texture for the pillars in the first room is an unusual choice.

3) Some of the actual doors have misaligned textures.

 

As far as I can tell on my brief UV playthrough, everything seems to work as it should! I think you should be quite pleased with yourself with your first attempt! I hope you continue to make more!

[cambreaKer]

 

[theDia]

Hi Santino,

I just played your map and have to agree with Arrowhead. For someone so young this is a nice piece of work. You included some nice traps and put some thought into the gameplay.

Now it's time for you to learn some of the finer detailing things. For Example:

 

If you construct your rooms on the grid you can avoid those strange angled floors and ceilings. Floors and ceilings in Doom always are oriented on the grid.

Which brings me to point 2 in this screenshot. You see the texture under the window doesn't "allign" with the walls. Depending on the editor you use it's an easy fix - if you have to do this manually you have to set the lower texture to -8 horizontally.

Also - Door-textures are normally 64 or 128 units wide, so if you build a door simply check this. :)

Next:

 

In the nukage-room you used a so named control-sector (which is a trick I learned when building my third or forth map - impressive) to lower the pillars with the imps. Here you have to fit the light-level of this sector to the surroundings.

As mentioned for someone your age this is an impressive first map. I never would have been able to do something like this in your age, but back then the release of Doom was almost twelve years in the future and we were impressed by the AtariVCS. :)

 

[wolfmcbeard]

That was a fun little romp, texture alignment and the door textures used on the pillars was odd to me.
But still, this was fun to play through and traps are well done, keep mapping kid.

[Simomarchi]

I've completed your map on UV in 3.58 minutes, with 87% kills, 100% items and 100% secrets.

 

The map was a short and confused environment, but however it was not the worst first map that I have ever played.

 

But, of course, starting with the visuals:

the map was really, really strange and poorly made regarding this point. There were door textures on the walls and there were texture misalignments everywere (for your future works I suggest to start with aligning the texture to your walls, or to adjust your walls to fit the texture that they are going to contain. This will help a lot in making your map visually appealing). 

Be sure to unpeg the textures on the windows if you want them to result aligned with the rest of your map, and also keep in mind that it is a good rule to change the floor/ceiling height if you want to change their textures (this will help to avoid weird texture's transition between two floors/ceilings).

The dimensions of the doors is, I think, completly random. They are too much thick to be pleasant to see and they are simply a different texture on a wall (it is a good idea to place them in a sort of "hole" in the wall, to break the visuals)

 

Thing placement:

nothing impressive also here. We have simple fights without ambushes and without any threat to the player. 

The radsuit is somewhat misplaced. You should consider the idea of placing it right near the (superslime!) nukage pool. Having that it is a 20% damaging floor it is really important for a player to have something to prevent that huge damage, so be sure to provide them with a clear and obvious method of protection (that is, a radsuit exactly in front of them when they enter the nukage pool)

The BFG is completly useless and the romero's head is a strange way to end a level (it is meant to be an easter egg, not something that the player see during the run, but there are famous maps that use it in your same way so it's ok)

 

General design:

the map is really confused. There are no clear indication of what have I to do in order to advance and I still have to totallg understand what have I done to complete the map. I suggest to start with a more linear and simple experience for your players, something you can manage better than a multi-path complicate map.

However, I liked how you "create" a sort of path in the nukage pool by walking on the central zone of the room. 

 

Overall an anonymous first map. Nothing terrible (it is not a square room) but obviously not good (it is far from being a real map). However keep it up. You are young and you have all the time to improve

[DuckReconMajor]

I enjoyed this a lot. I agree with most of what others said regarding improvements. I did like that when I got the radsuit I had to rush back over to the slime pool. Like @Simomarchi said, it's normally common practice to put it near the slime pool but I liked that I had to remember where it was and sprint back.

 

[spaztacus]

Nice job!!!  My points are similar.  Take some time to work with texture alignments and door tracks.  It can make a big difference.  Texture choices were also a little weird to me, but you are also just learning and playing around.  It takes a lot of guts to release something to the world and you did it.  Also remember, make what you enjoy.  If you like weird angles or odd level set up (which I don't think this was a odd set up level, just not a "standard" level) then make that.  Not everything released has to be a polished "Cacoward" winner.

[Suitepee]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/457022637

 

I play this at 2:17:55 into this playtest livestream. A lot of texturing/aligning of doors work needed, but some quirky combat was shown. I'm curious as to who the other mapper was that aided you out.