Cubefleet here, maps for you to play. Map01-Map04 complete.

[Cubefleet]

Hello all. These maps were made in Eureka 1.27, and are vanilla compatible. They were not intended to be played with jumping, crouching, freelook, etc. All were playetested by me in PrBoom v2.5.1.5. Each map can be played and beaten from a pistol start, there are no co-op or deathmatch options. Maps were mostly made with textures from the TECH section. Doom2 is meant to be the iwad. Peeking in on the maps using Freedoom as well and they look ok that way too.

I find the maps decently challenging assuming a pistol start, though a playthrough just before this post on HMP makes me wonder if they're too easy when played one after the other. I was tripping over extra health and ammo by the time I got into Map04. Some extra enemies have been thrown in for harder difficulties, and some extra medpacks and items for easier difficulties, though I have not playtested anything beyond HMP.

I'm not really sure what I'm looking for in terms of feedback at this point. If you have suggestions for changes or future maps I'm open to ideas. Haven't started on Map05 yet.

From Map03:
 

From Map04:
 

 

Edited to place space between pictures... Oops. ^.^''

Edit2: Minor updates!
-Textures for non 'DOORTRAC' doorways are now properly pegged in place and look less weird. It may be an unpopular opinion, but I kinda like how the Doortrac texture moves when a door is opened, so I'm leaving that in. (all maps)
-Fixed some wall/line segments in crushers and walls that were not properly lined up. (map04).

-Fixed darkness in area just before exit. (map04)

-Tinkered with enemies/texturing in the main combat area of Map03. It looks nicer now. :D

 

Cubef.wad.zip

Edited February 28, 2020 by Cubefleet : updated map files

[noisebloom]

Nice work! Is this your first set of maps?

 

You're playing with some interesting ideas and architecture, which I like. The recurring crusher motif is fun, though maybe using a different texture for the crusher walls would make it stand out more as a motif. It can seem a little random and jarring at times.

 

The first map is a good starting map to an episode, but maybe just a tad too claustrophobic, to the point of inhibiting movement too much. Opening it up a little could help.

 

The second map is probably the weakest of the four. It's very open and provides way too much health and way too many weapons for it to be much fun. Giving the player a chaingun, plasma rifle, BFG, etc. is a bit too much when the map primarily uses UD monsters in a not-so-challenging manner. Based on this map, I think there are two good focus points for you:

 

1. Using enemy variety effectively. Play with your monsters more. Much of the time, they seemed content with infighting. It can be rewarding to manipulate monsters into infighting, but if they are generally doing a better job of taking each other out than you as a player are, something is off. This is probably the area I would recommend focusing on more.

 

2. Cleaning things up. There's a lot of texture misalignment, and while that doesn't honestly bother me too much, more care into how your maps look will help. Keep playing through them and finding ways the game flow/experience can improve.

 

Map three was waaaay too short, disproportionately so. 

 

Map four was my favorite. It used ambushes and enemy placement in the most effective way, and if all your maps were this strong, you'd be in awesome shape for an entire episode.

 

Just my opinions - good job overall!

 

[DuckReconMajor]

FDA to finish

 

 

I found these levels to be very fun. I was able to complete all of them on the first try in Skill 4, pistol start, except for the 4th level and its crushers.

[Horus]

Demos attached (SDA maps 1 & 4, FDA maps 2 & 3)

 

Overall fun to play, good use of monster closets and crushers. Mostly I agree with noisebloom's comments. Certainly map 2 has way too many weapons, and a bit oddly placed between maps 1 & 3.

 

Make ensure you lower unpeg your linedefs that are used for door openings (so any DOORTRAK texture) and crushers, your maps will look a lot better for it. Cleaning up your texture misalignments and using a wider variety of textures and flats in each map would also help and make them look less monotone. 

0_demos_cubef.zip

[Cubefleet]

@noisebloom yes, these are the first maps I've made that weren't just me trying to figure out how to use the editor. Some of the misalignment is supposed to be secrets, or was my attempt at hinting at "there's a monster closet here". Others are indeed just that, misalignments that I didn't catch. I'm staring at the 2nd picture I posted, the right hand side next to the lone imp's little platform is just misalignment. Map01 and 03 both fit into a 1028x1028 space in their original versions and could probably use some expansion/more play spaces. They both started as ideas I had for incorporating crushers into a map, once I found out how to build them. I'll keep your suggestions in mind as I go forward, thanks for taking the time to give me some pointers. Map04 is my favorite of the bunch as well, it took me a couple days to put together. Perhaps I should have chosen CubeCrusher as my username. :P

@DuckReconMajor thanks for your video play-through/play-test! I'm glad to see that on skill4/UV it looks like it's challenging yet beatable. I feel kinda bad about all those crushers watching you die to them tho. :( I also did not realize the room with the exit was dark enough that finding the door would be such a chore. Sorry about that.

@Horus Thanks for playing! Map02 was the first one that I finished. I like it, but I really don't want to go retexture the whole thing to get it to match the others. Thanks for the tip about the doorjambs moving, I don't even notice it when I play. I'll see about getting some of that lower unpegged when I have time to do some more work on these.

Overall, I'm really glad that the general consensus is that they play decently, and could be a bit better with some tweaking. I kept looking at maps other people had made and going "huh, I don't really want to/think I have the time for that kind of detailing work/map size. I just want to run around, collect keys and shoot stuff." I'm not sure I'll have time to work on these again for a few days, but I'll get back to it and upload the updated version of it once I do. Though I'm also itching to make Map05 and incorporate the advice I've received here.

Mainly notes+summary to self here for when I come back to work on this in a few days, feel free to ignore:

Map01: widen/add a few more areas? Make secret in starting room more obvious?
Map02: reduce ammo/weapons/health across board. Add some more detail textures to wall. Make secret doors more obvious?
Map03: widen/add more areas for sure. Fix enemy placement in 1st major combat area.
Map04: Focus on lower unpeg and texture fixes. Possibly change flats or wall tex to make some crusher areas more obvious. Fix darkness level just before the exit switch so the door isn't painful to find.
Overall: Lock your doortracks, place monsters more carefully/test fights more thoroughly, and vary your textures more. Possibly decide on a standard texture+flats for crushers and stick to it so they're more noticeable? Or just jam more blood and corpses in each of those areas as hints.

[baja blast rd.]

02 is amazing -- and one of the best-playing maps released this year so far imo. I wouldn't change much about the gameplay. 

 

I did a video.

 

 

I enjoyed my first, unfamiliar playthrough too btw. It was hilarious having doors bust open and gangs of small fry materialize, over and over again. I also like how the rocket launcher is NOT the main weapon for this sort of action; "low-tiers and RL" is a well-known trope, but the placements in this map suit the other weapons better. The BFG and plasma rifle vie for cell dominance. Not many people manage to accomplish that. More often, when both are available, the plasma rifle is the BFGammo9k. The map flow is great too, the way the layout loops in a practical way. Well done.

If we're being technical, a lot of the successes might be better classified as "accidental," the design can be unsophisticated, and it's evident there is room for learning. In this sort of map, an expert mapper will generally use staging, an arsenal of "nudges," and various forms of conveyance to make the gameplay design seem deliberate and competent rather than have an air of "novice spamminess." Better visual design counts towards that too. But with the map being what it is, I wouldn't remove health and weapons. Like, if you did that, you'd be left with a dull, plinky room-door-room novice map like countless others in that mold. It would lie somewhere between bad and mediocre; it would excel at absolutely nothing. At least now, this map is fast-paced, dynamic, and hyper bloody, and does stuff well. To work with a more standard, less "comic" tone and a more restrained load-out, more extensive overhauls would be necessary. 

Edited February 25, 2020 by rdwpa

[DynamiteKaitorn]

This map does come with a few problems. For one, some enemies are placed in the worst areas. Maps 1 and 4 area good example of this where a spectre is placed somewhere where you're almost guaranteed to get hurt from it. Speaking of which, map 2 has a few small hoardes of former humans cause zombles?

Almost every door is missing the lower unpegged feature. A couple also have a small tutti-frutti error.

Why does every map have 3 keys except the first one? Half the time you can just exit with only 2 of them in hand.

 

Outside the weird designs, this map does have a nice tech feel to it. Health in the first two maps could be buffed IMO but otherwise I never felt like I was running out of supplies. Oddly though I never felt compelled to use my favourite gun, the plasma rifle.

 

Also the silent crushers in map 4. That's a sneaky way to add challenge! I nearly fell for it! XD

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

Friend, without a doubt that this map is a total living trap (from map 3), however, I enjoyed it a lot, in addition to that, I made it a small gameplay especially a route achieved at the tip of missiles and bullets with a character that I like it so much, when I have it uploaded to YouTube, I will put it here to show it. Excellent map, and I'll wait for another as crazy as this one.

[Cubefleet]

@rdwpa Thanks for all your thoughts on Map02 and the speedy play video.

@DynamiteKaitorn I do intend to get the door stuff fixed. Or at least start the process tonight. What is a tutti-frutti error? Glad you enjoyed the crushers.

@ElPadrecitoCholo I take it as a compliment that my maps are living traps! My prior design experience before this was making dungeons and dragons dungeons, so deathtraps and monster filled mayhem come naturally to me, though I have  alot to learn about Doom specific design.

I'm excited to continue working later tonight! Next time you all hear from me, there will be an update to the maps. ^.^

[DynamiteKaitorn]

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Tutti-frutti_effect

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

Let's see what comes as a surprise next time

[Cubefleet]

Okay. Minor graphical update is out, opening post has the updated file attached now along with a changelog.

Should I add my next map onto this wad and continue to use this thread? (I kinda feel like I screwed up naming this thread as Map1-4, instead of "Cubefleet's rolling-release Wad" or something.) Or start a new new thread and just stick the next map I make into it's own wad as Map01? What is the normal/expected practice for this?

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

 

@Cubefleet Well, the truth, that depends a lot on your friend map, if we speak it in a more detailed aspect, it could be the explanation of how your map would be, if it is large, or it is small, and according to a detail of this, we will know if you deserve to have your own thread so that you can create a solo map, or if you also have to link it to the other maps that you already have made in your Wad

[Misty]

11 hours ago, Cubefleet said:

Should I add my next map onto this wad and continue to use this thread? (I kinda feel like I screwed up naming this thread as Map1-4, instead of "Cubefleet's rolling-release Wad" or something.) Or start a new new thread and just stick the next map I make into it's own wad as Map01? What is the normal/expected practice for this?

If it's continuation of the same set, you should use this one with tittle updated or if you consider create something new, then new thread will be alright.

[Andreas]

On 2/25/2020 at 3:03 AM, Cubefleet said:

Edit2: Minor updates!

-Textures for non 'DOORTRAC' doorways are now properly pegged in place and look less weird. It may be an unpopular opinion, but I kinda like how the Doortrac texture moves when a door is opened, so I'm leaving that in. (all maps)

 

I agree! I only use lower/upper unpeg on secret doors. Anything with a doortrack I leave alone. The sliding effect is cool ;)

 

Oh and you can edit the thread's title, BTW.

 

 

[Cubefleet]

Hmmm. So Map05 started giving me a memory error when I tried to load it in Eureka, causing Eureka to crash. Not really sure what went wrong. Could be the editor, or my computer, or maybe visplane limit. All I know is when I made the same thing as a boom-compatible file it didn't crash and I was able to continue mapping. Since I'm now working on a boom compatible map instead of vanilla, I'll make a new thread for it once it's up. Might be a few days. I'm still building rooms.

[Andreas]

@andrewjmight know what happened there.

 

[andrewj]

On 2/29/2020 at 5:36 AM, Cubefleet said:

So Map05 started giving me a memory error when I tried to load it in Eureka, causing Eureka to crash.

Any chance you still have that exact wad file?

[Cubefleet]

22 minutes ago, andrewj said:

Any chance you still have that exact wad file?

 

Unfortunately no. I reverted to an old version that didn't contain the 5th map and I'm not seeing a copy of the broken one in my trash folder. Sorry. It didn't occur to me till @Andreas said something that it would be appropriate to document the crash/report it.

 

I only just now discovered from poking around that you're the guy that develops Eureka @andrewj ! Thanks for your work! It is my favorite editor.

 

I'll make sure to hang onto anything that breaks next time so you can look at it. :(

[Andreas]

I agree about Eureka. Awesome piece of software ;)

[andrewj]

2 hours ago, Cubefleet said:

'll make sure to hang onto anything that breaks next time so you can look at it

Cheers.