second attempt at mapping: one last mission

[96riv]

After my first attempt at mapping, I have now tried again, and even tried scripting for the first time (this may either be a pleasant surprise or a total letdown for whoever plays this). This is about eradicating demons. forever. and a hunt for a guy whose name means ass-mountain.

I intend to make more maps for this right now there's only two, change intermission screens, the works. I'm just not sure what to make them all like. I know there are a few problems:
1. the hudmessages might not be on the screen long enough, or maybe too long.
2. on the second map, the halls might be uncomfortably narrow.

just give me some feedback.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/h2tsp66irlu24hs/onelastmission.zip

[scifista42]

It's bad.

I'm sorry I'm telling you so straight, I don't say I myself am anyhow excellent at all, but see, let me follow with explaining why I do find your work bad:

In my opinion, the things that make good maps are leveldesign and gameplay. And your leveldesign is really nothing much. Orthogonal, monotextured corridors with no detail, no height variation and in fact, with no variation at all. But to be fair, many people start similar to this, me too.

Gameplay... is there. But nothing impressive. Without any effort, you kill a small amount of enemies with your shotgun and RL, and that's all. At least you balanced ammo. Remember, more than that is needed - fun shootage.

To top of that, the file has over 4.5 MB. It's really unnecessary, given how low/poor usage of new content the wad has. It's just "new content for the sake of new content". Once you'll find out that this approach is wrong.

To improve yourself, the best advice I can give you is: Focus more on gameplay and mainly, on leveldesign! Normally gameplay is more valuable than leveldesign, but in your case, it's the leveldesign that needs special improvement. Do you play usermade Doom wads/maps? It's definitely worth to take a look at some of the better maps made by the community, and watch out what makes it good. You'll notice that good maps are balanced, varied, nicely interconnected, literally eye-pleasing and provide interesting looks and combat everywhere. Then you may try to make a map resembling such a techbase, or hell map or whatever. Custom content, scripts and even a story are always minor. Remember, leveldesign and gameplay are the important!

And about your mentioned problem with text: With HUDMSG_LOG type-flag in the HudMessage function, the text will be written into console. So if the player didn't read the text in time, he can open console [;] and read it calmly. For me, the text definitely disappears far too early.

Hope this helps you.

[plums]

Gotta agree with scifista42 for the most part. The scripting is actually pretty good, but there's almost no "actual level" behind it.

I feel like trying to make maps with lots of scripting or custom content is not the best thing for you right now; you should be trying to improve the basics of design and gameplay, and sticking to something more vanilla will keep you focused on that.

I've seen worse from people who went on to make great things, so don't get discouraged.

[AtTheGates]

100% agree with scifista and plums. maybe you should start out with boom format, try to create an engaging map with the limited resources that you have there, and then see how scripting can be used to improve on that. that should help you to focus on the actual level design.

[Phobus]

To be honest, given the difference in basic mapping technique between vanilla or boom and ZDoom using UDMF or Hexen format, I'd actually say "stick to ZDoom, if that's what you're learning, but think less about features and more about basic layout and gameplay techniques". Ultimate Simplicity feels pretty classic despite being a ZDoom project and my own Coils of the Twisted Tale seems to be viewed as oldschool/'97 mapping in ZDoom, so I'd say it's not the port that is the problem, just simple inexperience.

[AtTheGates]

my point was rather that for a total beginner, understanding doom/boom format can help to better understand what kind of effects people expect to see; and it might keep you away from feeling a false sense of achievement through getting stuff to work like hud messages and new enemies and such, which i assume happened in this case here pretty much.

[Phobus]

Mine is more that learning to map for what is almost an entirely different game because you don't have the experience to produce good work in the port you're using is pointless. I mean, do people who aren't any good at mapping for vanilla get frequently referred to Wolf3D? "Yeah, sorry, your mapping for Doom isn't any good. I think it's the plethora of features that's doing it. Try your hand at Wolfenstein 3D first, so you don't have to worry about getting stuff like height variation, varied lighting and non-orthogonal walls right. You know, just simple layout and gameplay stuff for now."

Sounds stupid, right?

[schwerpunk]

I started out mapping in UDMF and while it is possible to get sidetracked by all the features, it's also really easy to make maps with.

[plums]

Phobus said:

I mean, do people who aren't any good at mapping for vanilla get frequently referred to Wolf3D? "Yeah, sorry, your mapping for Doom isn't any good. I think it's the plethora of features that's doing it. Try your hand at Wolfenstein 3D first, so you don't have to worry about getting stuff like height variation, varied lighting and non-orthogonal walls right. You know, just simple layout and gameplay stuff for now."

Sounds stupid, right?

If someone had shown that they got the concepts of Doom level layout and architecture, but were having real trouble with gameplay, and you could use the exact same tools and engine to make/test/play a Wolf3D level as a Doom one, this wouldn't be terrible advice :P

but anyhow I don't think there's anything wrong with staying in the ZDoom format. Just go easy with the more advanced features.

[96riv]

thank you all for the feedback, I didn't realize how much I focused on scripting advanced features more than gameplay. I changed a ton, and the map was probably a ton better, but it just got corrupted.