Maniacal.wad

[Cjwright79]

Have a look and let me know what you think.

No 3D starts, it's map 01.

http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/Maniacal.wad

[rabbitslayer]

Missing textures outside areas between sky and to of buildings.That was the only problem i found in it.Liked map it wasnt to hard or a pushover either.

[Super Jamie]

The outdoor area sky wall is a massive HOM on software ports (PrBoom anyway).

I was running low on ammo by the time I got to the mancs, and I was completely out fighting the Revenant downstairs and died. Lots of chaingunner spam really saps your health and armor, there are alot of little health pickups which is good but maybe a Green Armor in the two Mancs room or around the Yellow Key would be a good idea.

Try to avoid acute angles the player can run into, they tend to look silly and bounce you in the opposite direction, there's one upstairs around the "castle" where you get the Rocket Launcher.

Glad you are finally posting maps on a forum instead of using idgames as your test area. You have improved alot over your initial maps, though your texture usage is still quite messy and your detail level could improve. Not necessarily adding little pointless things on grid 2 or anything, but stuff like Lower Unpegged DOORTRAKs on your monster closets, inset your doors a bit so they're not flush with the wall as this is somewhat "unrealistic".

Have a read of Essel's Mapping Tips and Tricks to learn about placing your textures a bit better.

Welcome to Doomworld.

[Reptile]

Quite a nice design, though there was an issue with the ?Last? Mancubus that was close to the 2 Aracnotrons, as it was stuck in the light/torch decorations, it couldn't attack me/move. (Near the end if you can't decode my illiterate piece)

Some of the large open areas were a tad bit bland, could use some decorations out there, but thats just my opinion.

Other than that, it was a excellent stage to travel through, even though I was "BloodyFace" most of the time scavenging for ammo. Good work.

[Cjwright79]

Thank you very much for your feedback guys.

I wish I knew this site existed before I cluttered up ftp.gamers.org with all those half-baked maps. When you Google 'Doom wads' this comes up as number two, but it's a sub-page. Anyway, just glad that I'm with the program now.

[Super Jamie]

No worries. Check out John Romero's Design Rules for the things he stuck to whilst making the original Doom.

One thing I have also found helpful is to take a short map or an area from a larger map - be it Doom's E1M1 or your favorite PWAD - and try to recreate it from scratch without copy-paste. I've seen a few clever tricks this way, especially when you see how multiple authors do the same thing differently.

[Cjwright79]

The other week I came across a table listing all the new wads, where you could claim one for reviewing. I can't find that page now -- could someone please provide a link? Thanks very much.

~Chris

[wildweasel]

You mean the /newstuff Review Center? You'll usually find a link to it at the end of the latest /newstuff Chronicles post in the News forum.

[Cjwright79]

Thank you, perfect!

[Cjwright79]

Maniacal updated. Every criticism has been heeded. No more HOM I hope!

No more zip, just a wad:

http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/Maniacal.wad

Edit: removed 3D start mode

[Phml]

Plays fast and frantic, just as I like it. It looked different too, in a good way. Nice !

[Cjwright79]

Updated again. Nothing major. :) Still got lots of work to do before putting it up on gamers.org.

[Super Jamie]

The outdoor area is still a massive HOM



You also get texture bleed on Linedef 700



Please actually playtest your map in a software port :)

Maybe I'm stupid, but I thought the Blue Key was very missable, this was a real flow breaker for me, I walked around for AGES after finding the Yellow Key. The Blue Key would probably be better down in the underground passage where the Revenant and Backpack are (the single Revenant there is also a bit easy, I expected two). You could also make the Yellow Key the Blue Key, then move the Yellow Key into one of the buildings you access after the Blue Key Door. Maybe up with the Hell Knight in Sector 307? That seems a more logical flow, rather than have the player pick up all the keys around the beginning of the map then hope to use them later.

The shells in Sector 4 are kinda tough to pickup, cos you have to move so fast around there. Maybe move them ~80 units South to Sector 8?

The pit on Sector 47 is hard to find your way out of, it has alot of twisty hidden bits, nobody likes to lose 3/4 of their health finding a way out. I'd suggest an obvious escape teleporter in the middle, or at least more Medkits to help you survive longer.

The teleporter on Sector 342 does not work. Texture usage on Linedef 1009 and 1778 stands out as particularly silly, maybe continue the brick ledge of Linedef 1993 to cover it. Linedef 3757 and its' friends aren't blocking, so you can effectively skip the Blue Key door altogether.

The Arachnotrons up on Sector 223 are REALLY annoying. This is like an unfair Chaingunner trap, you are pretty much guaranteed of losing health regardless of what you do. I don't think stuff like that is much fun, your ideas may differ.


I always feel bad when I criticise a map like this, but I played it and continued to play and find errors because it's actually quite good. I absolutely LOVE the start, it's dangerous and there are so many combinations of infighting and health/ammo pickups and opportunities to get stuck, it's easy to die and fun to do well. The map is generally frantic with lots of opportunities to get your ass kicked if you're not paying attention. It's huge so the various types of monsters don't get stuck infighting and become less dangerous, then some battles are quite tight as well, you have a good knack for size variation that I find tough to put into my maps.

It's not quite ready for release yet but keep at it!

[Jodwin]

Super Jamie said:

Second screenshot

Also fix that bleeding fence.

[Cjwright79]

This wad is now on hold. I like Animasse better.

[Cjwright79]

<could not delete post, this is as good as I could get>

[Super Jamie]

No worries man. You can use a launcher like CDL, or just on the command line like this:

prboom-plus -iwad doom2.wad -file maniacal.wad -warp 1

Obviously the wad files need to be in the current directory for relative paths to work. You can use absolute paths like prboom-plus -wad c:\doom\doom2.wad -file c:\doom\mymaps\maniacal.wad as well.

I find commandline easier to deal with in Linux, a launcher easier to deal with in Windows.

[Cjwright79]

OK thanks I got it all working.

All your suggestions have been implemented, everything tested out in that emulator (correct term?), so I think it's probably nearing acceptability now. You guys are probably getting a little sick of playtesting but in case not, it is updated.

http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/Maniacal.wad

Thanks again.

[Super Jamie]

Had a quick run thru in godmode. Sky HOM, teleporter, texture bleed, etc are fixed.

The different Doom "emulators" are called Source Ports, have a read on the Doom Wiki for more info about the different ones and a bit of history.

[esselfortium]

Super Jamie said:

No worries man. You can use a launcher like CDL, or just on the command line like this:

prboom-plus -iwad doom2.wad -file maniacal.wad -warp 1

Obviously the wad files need to be in the current directory for relative paths to work. You can use absolute paths like prboom-plus -wad c:\doom\doom2.wad -file c:\doom\mymaps\maniacal.wad as well.

I find commandline easier to deal with in Linux, a launcher easier to deal with in Windows.

DRAG AND DROP IS 10000X EASIER THAN ANY OF THIS BS :D

[Super Jamie]

esselfortium said:

DRAG AND DROP IS 10000X EASIER THAN ANY OF THIS BS :D

And when I want to order my WAD files?

[esselfortium]

You do realize you can drag and drop from one window to another, right?

Or, better yet, use RocketDock and put your sourceports and editing utilities in it, so you can easily drag and drop wads and other files from anywhere; make it auto-hide so it doesn't use any screen real estate when you're not mousing over to drag stuff to it. I wouldn't want to imagine using Windows without it :P

[Super Jamie]

I can type faster than I can open and organise windows and docks and files and all that garbage, but that's a whole different topic.

[Cjwright79]

Here's mah demo on UV:

http://members.shaw.ca/cjwright79/maniac2.lmp

[Cjwright79]

Phobus in your review of this map you said the yellow key felt kind of pointless. Well, it lets you get the BFG, actually. Sorry you didn't find it, but it is there!

The latest version

[Phobus]

I can't really remember this map too well, so I'm not too sure if I ever did find the BFG or not. I'll be sure to try out the newest version in good time. I'll also be sure to try out darkstalkers too.

[Cjwright79]

There's only one tiny change in the updated version I think. My desire was just to correct the misconception that the yellow key is pointless.