Olio's Maps

[olio]

Welcome everyone to my very own thread where hopefully you will get to see my growth as a doom mapper. In this thread I plan on posting single map wads which you guys can play and give feedback on. Prior to posting this thread, I have only completed and posted one map to these forums which can be found below. As such, I though it might be cool to document my progress as a mapper, for others to see, particuarly fellow newbies. I'm hoping the thread will also provide me with motivation to keep up some level of consistent content creation and also establish a feedback loop, where I'll post a map, take feedback into account which I will then use on the next map to start the cycle again. I'm aware that it's often a mistake to commit to a whole episode (or a megawad) when you start out, so I will be focussing on small, short, single level wads until I feel a bit more confident with the whole map making process.

 

So below, I will post maps as I make them with relevant info and a little blurb regarding their creation. Hope you guys like them. As it's just me making and testing these things, expect some oversights and feel free to post any bugs or issues I've left in and I'll do my best to fix them.

 

My first ever map can be found here, in all it's primitive and unnamed glory.

 

Map 2 (Separare):

Spoiler

This map is too big. Way too big for my second map. I bit off far more than I could chew and this took a lot longer than I would have liked. It took a little under a month for me to put this together but it felt way longer. I sunk more of my free time into this than I had planned on and the map became larger than I as a mapper could really handle. As a result, I'm not too sure how it will play on your guys end. I was aiming for 'challenging on first play through for a veteran' but could well have stepped into 'cruel and unusual punishment' without realising. As the map got larger, so did the monster count and I don't feel qualified to correctly balance fighting on such a scale, but I tried anyway. Future maps will definitely be smaller than this and more thoroughly planned out. My intent here was to just experiment with space as much as possible and kept building without any goal or plan in mind. This led to some cool ideas but also rapid and unmitigated expansion. I think I need more of a finished product in mind before I start building to avoid going overboard like this.

Built in Doom Builder 2 and tested using GZDoom. It's meant to be boom compitible and I did some quick play throughs in prboomplus on my end. I initially wanted to balance this for all difficulty settings, but ran out of steam so UV only. And while I included 4 spawn points for coop, that was the extent of my balancing as far as that is concerned. I plan on focussing more on other difficulty levels in future maps.

 

Credits to the authors of the cc4-tex.wad and to 'Jimmy' for the MIDI file.

separare.zip

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Map 3 (Altepetl):

Spoiler

So some people started debating the use of square and rectangular room in the thread about my first map. I initially wanted to steer clear of these shapes for my third map, but this debate shifted me into drawing a few large square/rectangular fooms and filling them up. I wanted to get away from techbases, but those gothic textures that I'm a fan of still made their way into this otherwise, aztec type feel map.

Map is more difficult than my first map but not as bad as my second and not as long either. If you've finished the iwads, this won't be all that hard, but I hope to keep you on edge.

Built in Doom Builder X 2019.1 and tested in GZDoom 3.5.0.0. Aims to be Boom compatible and I had no issues running the map in PRBoom+ on my end.

 

All difficulty levels implemented and 4 spawns put down for coop, but I havn't gone as far as to make a dedicated coop difficulty.

 

altepetl.zip

 

 

 

 

Edit: I've run out of room to upload things in this post so I'll post future maps in other comments and link the posts here.

 

MAP 4

 

MAP 5

Edited December 7, 2019 by olio

[Lorenz0]

I played a bit of Separare, I think it has a very chaotic gameplay, which isn't exactly that fun, but I didn't play enough of it to give particularly detailed thoughts on why that is. One big reason why fighting huge hordes of enemies wasn't fun, is that I got into the big slaughter arena without ever grabbing the rocket launcher or the ssg. Later on I checked out the map again to see that there are two paths coming out of the spawn room, and one of them is supposed to be entered first. So the player has a 50% chance of playing the map as it's supposed to, which is honestly terrible design. If you design fights with the assumption that the player is going to have certain weapons, make sure you give them to him before that fight. If you make a non-linear layout for your map, you have to consider every possible path a player can take, and balance the gameplay around that. Most experienced mappers draw layouts of their maps on paper before they start making them, which I think helps a lot in making sure the progression is smooth.

For now I'd say you should focus on making levels on a smaller scale, and only once you get a feel for that, should you move on to bigger projects.

Btw I think that the map looks really good for a beginner, it's definitely better than my second map ever lol

I can see the potential in you for sure.

[olio]

This is why I suck at play testing. I run through the level as I invision it being played and make sure everything works. I get that right, but I never properly test what happens if you veer off that path. You are not supposed to be able to get through that door without the red key and have mercy on you if you go through there without playing the rooms where you get the keys. You're supposed to walk into that room with SSG, rocket launcher and a plasma rifle if you found the secret. 

Thanks for pointing that out and I'm sure it's not the last thing someone will bring to my attention. Yeah, that map was too big for my abilities, but it should be more balanced now that you can't just walk into that slaughter without the proper weapons.

Working on a smaller scale map now that I plan on having finished in a week or two. Thanks for complimenting my aesthetics; even if I don't have gameplay down yet, I like to think my map looks pretty.

Edit: I've fixed that door and reuploaded 'separare' if anyone wants to try and run through it now that it should force you down the intended path.

[Lorenz0]

One additional thing you should have in mind; backtracking sucks and no one likes it, so instead of making the player go into one path, then go back to spawn and make him go into the other, it's a good idea to make looping rooms like this, so that the player is always going forward.

[olio]

Hmmm, I might have to run through it a few more times to make sure everything is working. There shouldn't be any backtracking. You do revisit rooms, but via a couple 'conceptual' loops.

 

My intended playthrough for 'separare' is as follows:
Spawn, go through vent, through dark computer bit, up lift and into bright blue room. Open orange bars, go through door hit switch to open red bars, hit switch to teleport up to blue key. Go through blue door, open a couple more sets of bars and you have the yellow key. Teleport back to spawn. Go through yellow door that was previously locked, get red key and then go through red door. Outside is opening a set of bars to go through a door that leads to the 4 switch finish thingy.

I'll check I haven't left some doors improperly tagged or anything.

[Lorenz0]

I didn't look at the updated version, so this is just a general tip for the future.

[olio]

It's certainly something I plan to keep in mind for future maps!

[olio]

Hi guys, I have finished my 3rd map and have updated the OP to include it. My first map has a few playthroughs (which I'm really grateful for!) but still only one person game enough to have taken on 'separare'. Now with the inclusion of 'altepetl', plenty more to play through! Let me know what you think.

:)

[Magicana]

Playing through Separare (No video because I'm lazy and doing heaps of things at once).

 

This does feel like a map that has gotten away from itself - Three keys in and I'm only at ~1/5 of the kills. If you're good, I won't tell Suitepee how many revenants are in this map :P.

 

I haven't finished yet, so I can't say too much more yet :P.

[olio]

Thanks for playing! 

 

Yeah, Separare just kept getting bigger. I'm not sure at what point it turned into a slaughtermap, but that's what it turned into. I mostly used the map to experiment with space and architecture; but I experimented too much with space and that huge area near the end needed to be filled. :P
 

I was consciously more restrained with Altepetl and as a result is much more manageable.
 

[olio]

Map 4 is here!

 

I called this one 'Amphiptere' and went with some brighter colours and utilised those lovely mosaic patterns that come with cc4-tex.wad. I tried to be quite thorough with difficulty balancing and that's where most of my learning took place for this one. I'll be happy if just one person plays on UV, but I spent hours tweaking thing numbers between the 3 different difficulty settings. HNTR should be fine for everyone here, HMP will probably hurt a little on first playthroughs and UV is for you masochists who enjoy a map that tries to kill you at all times. Still relying too much on squares and rectangles, so for my next map I'm implementing a no square or rectangle rule. Force myself to use other shapes. Hope you guys enjoy!

 

Download: Amphiptere.zip

 

Screenshots:
 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

[olio]

Took a little bit of a break, but am now back with another map!

'Starfright' is another map textured using cc4-tex.wad another midi file by Jimmy. Again, full difficulty settings implemented and UV is pretty brutal. Still getting the hang of mapping, but I can tell I've gotten better, because I'm sure this is my best map yet. I'm getting more confident with Doom Builder and have started picking up little tricks to make things look a bit more interesting. I keep telling myself the next map will be a short one, but that never seems to be the case. Maybe it will be this time and I can squeaze out another map before the new year.

Download: Starfright.zip

Sreenshots:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 8, 2019 by olio : Forgot to add coop spawns in the map. There are 4 spawns now

[kknot5889]

Nice! I'll should find time to play and record this one this week. Looks great!

[Austinado]

 

[Austinado]

 

[olio]

Thanks for the play throughs! At work now but will watch them when I get home. 

[kknot5889]

Finally got around to playing Starfright. Here's the video with commentary.

 

 

[olio]

Thanks for that! I will watch it later today.

[olio]

Sorry, some real life stuff came up. :/

 

Thanks for the playthrough again, even if I got held up watching it. You made it through UV, so congrats on that! Although you grabbed the SSG from the spawn room? I didn't think you could do that... In addition to the mid-way archie being too much of a potential difficulty spike, I think I will make some fixes and reupload that map.

 

Ammo is very tight, maybe too tight? I try and starve the player a bit, but maybe I'm squeezing them a little too much. On the other hand, it's my intent for UV to make the player feel consistently behind the 8-ball and if players want something easier I got easier difficulties mapped.

 

Those barrens in the confined area does play how I intended; you are meant to use the bars for cover and shoot through them. There was meant to be only two, as I always killed the third before going into that room, but I got mappers knowledge the player doesn't have. In HMP, it's a HK and an imp. More manageable for sure. I try and make each encounter different for each difficulty, but maybe I should take out a hell knight and make the encounter the same as HMP, or scrap the idea almost entirely and just make them both imps like on HNTR. I'll think that over. 

 

I've been toying with the idea of uploading my maps with a demo of me beating them, to prove that they can be done in one run, without saves. Some of my maps seem too hard when I've watched other people play them, but I do beat all my maps on UV before uploading them. I don't want to make UV easier, but I want to make it so that congestion isn't the main difficulty source.

 

Also, no, that yellow switch can't be used as archie cover, but I agree that it should be. I'll probably extent that switch panel up to the roof.

 

Again, thanks for playing and expect more maps on the way.

[olio]

Practise map I made to familiarise myself with otex. Other than being my first attempt at using otex, this is not notable. :P

otexio.zip