Fort of the three lords (my first map)

[FrillsTheLizard]

Hey hi and howdy. I've finally finished my first ever fully completed doom wad.

File and stuff

Made by me in like 3 months or so.

Have some screenshots and feel free to toss some critiques my way. Sorry if the map (and hell this post) is rough and stuff, first time doing this kind of thing.)

[obake]

Just downloaded. I'll give it a whirl tomorrow. Looks cool!

[IncognitoMode]

i might not be the brightest, but i thought i needed a red skull to open this door so i spent 5 minutes looking around for it until i realized i didnt need one

:p

 

[Clippy]

Well your map was great for a first map

 

I recorded a video for you but my mic died again, I'm so furious

 

 

Everything I said was lost sorry buddy

 

 

[Biodegradable]

A very solid first effort, mate. Those three months really show and it's nice to play a beginner map that looks like it wasn't farted out in one afternoon. Lots of effort, thought and detail have been put into this and I really enjoyed it. Besides some small texture misalignment problems here and there, this is some great work. I enjoyed all the set pieces and liked your out-of-the-box style to progression. A lot of people hate backtracking, but you kept it to a minimum thankfully as your map isn't too big or difficult to navigate. Very good use of decoration and using landmark pieces to help let the player know where they are and I especially adored the Satantic Last Supper table part. Really good stuff here, I'd love to see more mapping efforts from you in the future.

 

Gameplay:

UV | GZDoom + Zagemod

 

 

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Very nice stuff for a first map.

[smeghammer]

Just did a first play, GZDoom on UV. Yep, pretty good first go. Keep it up dude.

 

A couple of things:

 

progression was nice, and a couple of cool traps - I particularly liked the silent teleport thing, it reminded me of something similar in Breach and that's no bad thing at all. There were a couple of texture mis-alignments, but mostly I didn't notice. One thing I did notice a bit more was unpegged doortraks - it just looks odd.

 

Also, I thought the abrupt end after teleporting away from the cyberdemon was a bit unexpected - I missed some secrets because of it...  

 

These are minor niggles of course - all in all great to play and decent progression. Will play again to get the secrets :-)

[EmptyCell]

I've gave it a whirl in GZDoom with Supercharge on UV. I agree that this is a solid first map.

But with that, I still must say you have lot to improve upon.

 

Anyway, here are some things I've noticed:

As @smeghammer said, there are some textures that are tad bit misaligned.

Adding to that I've noticed that doors have moving DOORTRAK textures (Tick "Lower Unpegged" option for those side lines in editor).

I also agree, that abrubtly cutting the player off to the rest of the map is kind of not great, wanted to look for remaining secret and couldn't get back.

For some reason, when I pushed the button that supposed to lower the platform with blue armor on it, it didn't lower itself.

It lowered itself until I came to that pillar and pressed use.

I've noticed in a room that looked like a office with a single Hell Knight, that ceiling drops a bit down when pressing use on the eye in the pentagram. I've uploaded gif of the bug in action here.

I've also noticed this happened in @Biodegradable's video at 3:40 mark.

 

I hope, I wasn't too harsh on ya. Just trying to be more helpful.

[FrillsTheLizard]

3 hours ago, EmptyCell said:

I've gave it a whirl in GZDoom with Supercharge on UV. I agree that this is a solid first map.

But with that, I still must say you have lot to improve upon.

 

Anyway, here are some things I've noticed:

As @smeghammer said, there are some textures that are tad bit misaligned.

Adding to that I've noticed that doors have moving DOORTRAK textures (Tick "Lower Unpegged" option for those side lines in editor).

I also agree, that abrubtly cutting the player off to the rest of the map is kind of not great, wanted to look for remaining secret and couldn't get back.

For some reason, when I pushed the button that supposed to lower the platform with blue armor on it, it didn't lower itself.

It lowered itself until I came to that pillar and pressed use.

I've noticed in a room that looked like a office with a single Hell Knight, that ceiling drops a bit down when pressing use on the eye in the pentagram. I've uploaded gif of the bug in action here.

I've also noticed this happened in @Biodegradable's video at 3:40 mark.

 

I hope, I wasn't too harsh on ya. Just trying to be more helpful.

Nah it's all good! Thanks for the heads up about the lower unpegged thing, and yeah the blue armor secret was really fucky for me to get working. I'm probably gonna make it less fucky and just have part of the fountain be a lift

[EmptyCell]

Actually about that secret, I've checked it out and found what's wrong with it.

You got 2 sector lowering triggers really close to each other.

With that, the sector with blue armor can lower itself faster and reach the outer sector before the outer sector can even reach the floor.

That's why the sector with blue armor can be way too high, cuz it reached its near lowest floor.

I was experimenting tad bit with it, and came up with this solution to make it less messy:

Spoiler

Instead of making 2 sectors, I've merged those two sectors into one (pic here).

After that I've deleted the trigger that lowers the outer sector, since it's no longer needed.

I've changed the switch trigger to "S1 Floor Lower to Lowest Floor" (S1 so its switchable only once - pic here).

Result: Link

This solution only works with one sector only. With 2 sectors you would need to work out different solution.

[UndeadRyker]

This is a very nice first map with a lot of effort put into it. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it! I recently read some additional replies here in the thread and I found that I agreed with all, if not most of them. Here's some quick notes off the top of my head after playing it in Ultra-Violence during my first attempt:

• The map can be confusing at first to navigate. For example I thought the door marked with blue banners needed a blue key to open so I promptly ignored it to search elsewhere. Some doors don't open and some do when you press a switch somewhere. The progression was okay but it felt somewhat shaky to navigate and I mostly felt unsure on where I was supposed to go after I do something.
• What redeems the above is the landmarks. The satanic dinner table,  the mancubus room, the jail cell area are ones that come to mind off the top of my head. I don't typically need to consult the automap looking puzzled 90% of the time.
• I missed a whole bunch of stuff because I ran past the Cyberdemon/barons/knights fight panicked, looking for a plasma rifle/BFG since the room was littered with cell ammo. I wish I could've went back and explored the other rooms and locked doors I had the keys for. Map also ended abruptly at a door that I wouldn't have assumed to be the exit.
• Speaking of ammo, I felt like if I went into the Cacodemon horde area in a different order or if RNG was unforgiving it would've been impossible to kill all of the Cacodemons and UVMax it. I wasn't too bothered by that but there might've been someone unfortunate who ran out of ammo during that area, or someone who cares about getting all kills might've been let down by the lack of ammo. The lack of ammo was definitely due to the order of the rooms I explored and the unexplored rooms I meant to explore later (some I watched from Biodegradable's video were chock-full of ammo!).
• The level of detail and the gameplay in this map was like 1000% better than my first map I ever uploaded to the internet for Doom. Major props for taking time with this one. If I really wanted to get nitpicky then there were a few texture misalignments but nothing major.

All in all, it was a charming and wonderful first map with some ironing-out needed with the clarity in terms of where to go and allow for return trips for certain areas for curious players. Please keep it up and continue making more maps! I played this map in PrBoom 2.5.1.5 in UV, so here is my FDA if you want to observe how I approached your map. Alternatively here's a YouTube video of that demo for easy viewing: 

 

[obake]

Gave it a whirl. Though the detailing isn't perfect, it is still a fun map! One thing I would do is maybe add some teleporting monsters here and there, to spice up some of the combat. Other than that, I'm not sure I can add anything that hasn't been said. Good work. :)

[Clippy]

 

[TheLetterTen]

I'll post my terrible playthrough with Project Brutality. Tis a good map! I know, not the highest difficulty but I still quite enjoyed it.. and with Project Brutality installed!

 

 

Edited August 20, 2020 by TheLetterTen

[princetontiger]

Ton of fun... just played thru it. I like the 'techbase' ending, and wish there was more there.