The Quandary

[sheridan]

I made this map:
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?file=levels/doom2/Ports/p-r/quandary.zip

And I thought I would start a discussion thread because I wanted to comment on a little of the feedback I've gotten there.

Of course, if you haven't played the map yet yourself, please do so! It looks like this:

http://i.imgur.com/Q5e5jKS.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/UgY2DQU.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/L6dCOoe.jpg

Nothing fancy, as it was just meant to kind of emulate Sandy and Romero's mapping styles from Doom II (which are my favorite kind of maps anyway).

But anyway, on to the discussion.

There are a few quite bad design decision like maze with strobing light and it forces you to take damage to acquire red skull key

Okay, see, this makes me kind of sad because I was honestly kind of proud of the strobing light maze :( There's a reason you're given the chainsaw literally right before it, you know. Also there are a lot of small light sources in the maze so you can always find your bearings and never get stuck in the dark.

Ending is rather anticlimactic too. I got BFG but was afraid to use it as I had no ammo on other weapons and to my surprise I could just run past everyone.

Okay, I'm personally also not to pleased with the ending either, since I missed a great opportunity to throw an archie or two around to start reviving things and create more of a challenge than I did. Phooie.

To be honest my two biggest problems with my map are:

1. Not open enough. The opening hints that I was going this way with wide streets and a cool sea-side vista thingy, and the map on the whole was supposed to resemble The Citadel or The Factory more in layout (big huge building in center of large open area) but in the end it sorta devolved into a much simpler layout. Blame my impatience and inexperience I guess.

2. The level peters out too fast in general. It takes a fair amount of time to get to the blue key but once you've gotten that far it doesn't take more than a couple minutes to get the red and yellow keys in rapid succession. If I had taken another day to work on it I would've extended the level widely past the blue door so the whole thing kinda wraps around to the other side as originally intended, but impatience again got the better of me here.

I have other problems with the level too, like the layout being too cramped in some places, the ledge with the chaingunners being wasted by overlooking a semi-superfluous nukage pit, and more, but once I'd gone that far it was hard for me to turn back from the design I had if I was going to muster up the motivation to finish the damn thing.

But yeah, I did finish it, and I think the whole thing turned out sort of fun, so I hope it wasn't a waste in the end.

[hex11]

The first screenshot immediately reminded me of The Citadel (even without reading your text). Too bad you used ZDoom instead of just vanilla. Dunno what that bought you, except making it less compatible. I mean, for this kind of basic level design, it's overkill to require anything beyond vanilla, or at worse limit-removing. But Romero/Petersen style is so basic that just vanilla alone ought to be enough.

[sheridan]

The only thing the wad uses which is actually ZDoom dependent is a MAPINFO lump. I don't think the map itself actually breaks any limits.

[scifista42]

sheridan said:

The only thing the wad uses which is actually ZDoom dependent is a MAPINFO lump. I don't think the map itself actually breaks any limits.

If the map was vanilla compatible, then you shouldn't have mentioned ZDoom as the compatible port, because when people think about compatibility, they typically think about the lowest possible compatibility.

However, this map is not vanilla compatible.

I've attempted to play the wad in PrBoom-plus with -complevel 2 vanilla compatibility, but then the game broke when I've pressed this door. It's obvious why - 0 tag on a SR/WR/GR/S1/W1/G1 linedef makes no problem for ZDoom, but in vanilla and Boom, in means that all sectors with tag 0 in the entire map will be affected. That's just for you to know. Anyway, I also recommend to try making your map as low compatible as possible, since you're not using any advanced features.

I'll give the map a proper playthrough in a ZDoom port later.

[sheridan]

Good to know, thanks :)

[scifista42]

So I've played the map. It was not just vanilla-styled, it was literally idSoftware-styled, while things were mixed up enough so that there weren't obvious homages. Overally the map was rather non-challenging, specially the ending, but the map was also fun to explore and I liked it. Nice one. Nukage could have dealt twice less damage (2-5%), not only because idSoftware mappers did it that way, but also because I've been dying in the tunnels too easily.