My first public doom wad

[niki356]

Hello members of the doom world community, I have come to announce that you have gained a whole new mapper: me, I have spent 3 days creating this map (that I will most likely revisit, I was trying to get more of a proof of concept here and proof that I am not going to be reliant on custom resources to make my wads look good) I am super glad to show you guys slgd.wad: experience the thrilling adventure into an old, abandoned cave where the mining personel seems to have dissapeared , only a few of them were found dead, the majority of those miners are MIA, now is the time to move, to try and recover whatever UAC assets were lost and make sure whatever killed theese workers doesn't kill humanity too, descend into the cave and slay whatever's down there (the midi used is from descent, map 13'theme is incredible

download: https://www.mediafire.com/file/h7ddc5cq1hltptf/slgd.wad/file

also I can't get it to work on anything but GZdoom, if anyone could lend me a hand with that it would be much apriciated

[niki356]

also, please do give me criticism, I want to improve and make things that this community will adore to play trough, not hapless garbage

an almost succesful playtrough of my map:

 

[Majin]

I Didn't know where I was supposed to go, the exit of the level seemed random. 

Feels like there's too much space and monsters, there was very little in the way of gameplay besides circling and making them infight. 

Setting feels incoherent, I wouldn't know it was a mine if you didn't tell me otherwise.

I'd suggest putting things in the map to signify that, such as support beams, minecarts, tracks or mining equipment. 

The cave itself doesn't feel like a cave either, it has some weird brick temple in there.

In general the textures and geometry are incredibly mismatched and inconsistent. 

 

 

 

[Degree23]

The ending was definitely not signposted well. If you go onto the Cyberdemon platform there's some big HOM effects from missing textures. I also died down there as there didn't seem to be a way to escape the lava? I might have been getting blinded by the HOM and missed it though.

 

The layout of the map seemed pretty good. I did know mostly where I should be going, and while the larger areas could have used a few more monsters, the combat was quite enjoyable.

[niki356]

Hello there, I am so thankful for all this feedback and I must agree with the exit not being good at all, also I must admit, I was kind of too dumb to put a way out of most of my damaging pits wich is heavily on me, good doom design says if it isn't a super hard challenge it shouldn't be filled with unfair pits of death, also you have helped me figure out probably why my map won't start on prboom+ (wich is my goal for this map to be prboom compatible) thanks for that, I will make sure to put in a version with more decoration that shows it isn't just a random assortment of caves and is actually a mine and work on that temple, wich honestly it not looking good was solely on me wanting to use that brick pattern but not really realizing it wouldn't be all that recognizable as a demonic temple, I should work on that, and another thing is to use more tiny little sidetracks to make the way forward clearer, wouldn't it be a lot better level design wise for there to be a few yellow skullkey bars infront of that elevator section followed by a tunnel with some rails, maybe even a derailed cart if I wish to get into the doom cute angle of doom mapping (wich I very much do) all to make the map a bit more coherent? Even mix up the combat scenarios a bit, the arena is half the desciding factor in any doom map's combat and I didn't experiment with it in this one, I had 1 tiny arena in a whole map, that is not good level design, thanks for the advice, it is much apriciated

[Riclo500]

I enjoyed it! Nice job, though the cyberdemon at the end isn't necessary to kill
 

 

[niki356]

I may actually implement a crusher for him, the ending of the map sucks so I'll do something else for it and make a few changed, thanks for the playtrough

[Delisk]

 

[pbldcttr]

for a first level its great, its short and to the point - the exit i feel is abrupt but reminds me of my own early maps [did the same in some too, lol] - gameplay i found it to be fun, i have no issues there, at the very start seeing the horde of enemies i was a bit like its one of those maps with hundreds of enemies on every area but no. at least not on skill 2 [i know, im horrible what can i say] - again, i had lots of fun. i loved the cyberdemon being at a higher platform shooting rockets at us [as well as the archvile] - it was a funky moment, probably my favorite part.

 

im guessing its been mentioned already but falling on pits you cant get out is not fun. a simple teleporter in some corner works [i also used to do this on my early maps and i later realized how bad of an idea this was] - and the cyberdemon sector, when you get in there, it lowers but there are no textures for it so it becomes into this crazy psychedelic insanity. and maybe having a clear exit, not even a switch or a teleporter exit pad, perhaps a simple exit sign before coming out of this cave would work and let players know whats about to happen.

 

apart from that i liked it. again, i have no real issues with badly aligned textures or unpegged ones even, but you can always fix those and tweak the map as you go. i liked the little details like the trees and the hanging dude.

[niki356]

Ah, I totally missed that, thanks

[niki356]

ok, quick mini update, when the second itteration of this map comes (wich will have a few new areas and I will also rework an area in it too) don't bother killing the 2 enemies that are shooting at you from a high ledge, that problem will be sorted

[niki356]

I will also add better difficulty settings because honestly, I'm not all too happy with them

[xsnowboarderx]

Without reading the plot first, I had no idea that this was supposed to be a "mining cave" sort of map.  Your map mainly consists of gigantic, wide open areas, with not much detail.  The beginning with the monster infighting was kind of fun.  It was a fun challenge trying to scoop the SSG and Rocket Launcher without getting hit.  However, toward the later half of the map with the cyberdemon, there were numerous issues with missing textures, as well as lack of direction.

 

The dark pit area that has the dead marine was misleading, since I thought that maybe there was something over there to grab or an area to get to.  Instead, I fell into the dark pit that was inescapable with no damaging floors, causing a soft lock.  When it came to the final part with the cyberdemon platform, more missing textures were noticeable, and I found that entering his pit meant that there was no way out, even if I had managed to kill him.  Like others have said, the exit was completely sudden with no indication of it being the end of the level.

 

Overall, the map was able to be finished with 100% kills, which is nice.  I would suggest adding a bit more detail to better describe the environment, as well as making map geometry that gives the player a bit more clearer direction of where to go, and areas that don't trap the player and cause a potential soft lock.  Also, I would suggest becoming more familiar with properly using textures and geometry together, not only to reduce HOMs, but to make the map look more aesthetically pleasing and seamless in execution.  For a first map, this is not all too terrible, but there is a lot of polishing that needs to be done to make it more playable and good looking.

 

[niki356]

hey there, I know this here isn't really an answer to all the comments, but it's a start, I'll show you guys a slight upgrade in this map I made, the real big one should be done by tommorow but I first need to get enough braincells in that skull of mine to rub into a coherent doom map, so for now just enjoy this small little upgrade I am giving you, the community

download: https://www.mediafire.com/file/niey7v3q0ccwzxu/slgd2.wad/file

your comments and criticizm will be used in the fully revamped version

[Suitepee]

https://youtu.be/qI-TqSsHfhw

 

Here's my playthrough. You should put the UPDATED version of your wad in the original top post, since it's a good thing I noticed it at the bottom of the thread when playtesting.