My best map so far, made in 2 days :)

[j0hku]

So here's my new map. Its kind of a techy space base map combined with a city map. Playtime is about 7 to 10 minutes of UV. (also 6th map I have made, first longer map)

 

IWAD: DOOM2

PWAD: oulu.wad

Map: MAP01

Tested with: PrBoom+ and Crispy Doom

Recommend playing on UV or HMP (most fun)

Freelook, jumping etc. NOT intended.

Singleplayer only

 

Thanks for playing! :) -johku

 

oulu.zip

[Lucius Wooding]

I gave this one a shot and there are some decent simple fights in it. I hope you continue to work on your maps and this was a pretty good effort for only 2 days spent. 

 

Pros:

-All the doors and switches work and the map is possible to UV max without issues. This isn't a guaranteed thing by any means so kudos for at least playtesting your map and sharing something relatively finished.

-I see you're experimenting with different styles of textures and room designs, this kind of variety is really good to learn what works and add to your reportoire.

-I liked the lighting in the beginning area, you should definitely make more use of lighting effects in the rest of the map though. It doesn't have to be that detailed to make stuff look a lot better. This goes especially with techbase and indoor maps. It's one of the most underrated tools in the mapper's toolbox.

-The ammo and health were pretty reasonable in my opinion, with plenty of extra shells just in case the player wastes them. Health was a bit tighter but a good amount for UV. 

Spoiler

-Some of the fights were fun even if they're simple, like the classic crowds of imps and the room full of barrels. Nothing wrong with small doses of wholesome violence.

-The best designed and hardest fight was probably the final outdoor area with the revenants. Even though there is plenty of space and cover, the limited health makes it pretty dangerous to get hit. The monsters infight a bit and it forces you to move around; you can't really just pump rockets to clear it.

-The hell knight building with the archvile was decent, not too mean of an archvile placement and I kinda sniffed it out but it was a bit more dangerous than most of what came before. I fully expected the one at the ending but I was on low health so I was lucky I saved rockets for him.

-The rocket secret is fun, sometimes giving the player a bunch of rockets is just a pro mapping move. It'd be a lot of SSG gameplay without it so it's nice to let the player speed things up in a few spots. 

 

 

Cons:

-Overall the map is pretty simple in terms of geometry, a lot of flat and square areas. Some areas like the big staircase and the final outdoor area have a bit more detail but the room with the single mancubus in the slime pit and a few others could use some more complexity and variety in textures. For a map built in 2 days though I don't consider this to be too bad an issue, and obviously it wouldn't apply to vanilla compatible maps as much. 

-There are a few misaligned textures, like underneath some windows and above doorways. Usually when using auto align this will happen. Not a huge deal but it requires manually changing the texture offsets to fix. Also the teleporter to the final area is a bit weird, not sure if there's a sound hole or something going on but the UAC texture is cut off and seems like it's out of place.

-The doortracks on a couple doors, such as the hut full of barrels and the one before the final outdoor area move up and down with the door. Usually you don't want them to be unpegged unless you're going for this effect, and not all doors in the map do this.

-Just FYI there's also a map 29 version of this map included in the wad with a lot of stuff missing, I assume it went in as an oversight from an earlier version.

Spoiler

-The demon in the staircase room gets stuck on the stairs a bit. I think they need to be longer steps for him to be able to walk down, or something like that. The AI can be a bit finicky about this. 

-The hell knight on top of the yellow key tower is stuck in place since I think the corner of his hitbox overhanging a ledge. It might not matter on some sourceports but it just makes him unable to attack or move unless his sector moves down.

-I think the barons on the rooftop could have been hell knights, cacos or revenants. It's a bit too tight to use anything but SSG and they sometimes don't like to come out to the outer edge so it took a bit of time to chase them down and kill them. Luckily it wasn't a huge mob of them but they're not too much of a threat, they just take 20+ shots to kill. 

-I don't usually love mazes in maps personally. The one in the ending area isn't bad but it's a bit time consuming. Luckily...

-The progression in the final area is a bit pointless. You can exit once you find the yellow key; the hidden switch by the shells which opens it up is raised by clearing the maze. However once you know where the switch is, it need not be raised to trigger. This is one of the quirks of Doom's engine, even a couple of the maps from the original games are affected. Just go to the spot where it raises, hit use on the front of it and you can skip the maze entirely. You could either place the yellow key in the maze (though it won't require the player to fight the hell knights to exit), or just make the switch in the maze lower the key directly and eliminate the hidden one. (I had 2 switches in one of my maps that could be cheesed like this even though I knew about this trick, even uploaded it to idgames before noticing. So it's not always an obvious thing.)

 

[Martin Howe]

Has the file been updated since it was first played? The screenies look good and I'd like to play it, but cannot open the zip file; unzippers on both Linux and Windows choke on it, saying there is a missing central directory; even zip -FF from a CLI can't fix it :( The file command (Unix/Linux) says the file is RAR archive data, v5, which is what 7Zip on Windows also says it is, so perhaps it could be renamed in your link just so we know how to extract it.

 

I guess the reason nobody else has noticed this is because a lot of people use IZArc, 7Zip, and so on; they usually cope with the data format without saying anything, but please remember that if it ends in .zip, it really should be a zip archive :)

Edited August 20, 2022 by Martin Howe

[KZ_Frew]

I uncompressed the archive with 7Zip and yeah, I got a warning that this is not actually a zip archive.

 

I had a nice time with this map. Here's a HMP-Max playthrough, I had some trouble on UV in the final area

 

 

A little feedback below!

 

Spoiler

The mancubus in the slime pit room with the red card sometimes gets stuck on the edge of his platform, for some reason, and this keeps him from moving and firing. Also, in that same room, there is no way out of the slime pit if you fall.

 

The rocket secret is great, although if you asked me, I think there should be more secrets in the map! A plasma gun or berserk pack somewhere would be sick, and keep things challenging without being too overpowered.

 

[j0hku]

On 8/20/2022 at 5:03 PM, Martin Howe said:

Has the file been updated since it was first played? The screenies look good and I'd like to play it, but cannot open the zip file; unzippers on both Linux and Windows choke on it, saying there is a missing central directory; even zip -FF from a CLI can't fix it :( The file command (Unix/Linux) says the file is RAR archive data, v5, which is what 7Zip on Windows also says it is, so perhaps it could be renamed in your link just so we know how to extract it.

 

I guess the reason nobody else has noticed this is because a lot of people use IZArc, 7Zip, and so on; they usually cope with the data format without saying anything, but please remember that if it ends in .zip, it really should be a zip archive :)

Oh man sorry, It compressed to .rar and i changed it to zip, but i guess it didnt work. Here's (hopefully) a zip file this time. :D

ouluZIP.zip

[TheSlipgateStudios]

Heya j0hku! I playtested your map and made an unlisted video on YouTube (I can make it public only if you accept that)

Here's a link to the gameplay:

 

And now here is my summary:

The map is quite good, I enjoyed playing it somewhat. There are neat encounters which I had no problems to get past them, the level design is okay but I have one single nitpick: in the slime room where you have one raised platform to cross over, it's too far away to successfully get past it and I ended up falling in the pit with no way of escaping it. Next time, don't make the same mistake okay?

Level progression is decent, the textures are nicely used but some building designs are pretty mediocre, but overall I enjoyed my time playing this map.

My score for it is 3.3/5.

Edited August 22, 2022 by TheSlipgateStudios

[Custom Longplay]

Oulu - [4K] - [100% Secret]

 

 

[Clippy]