Test map again.

[Hoodie]

So I've been working on test maps, just to try and get good at map making. I wanted to share one of them I think I did a good job on.

As always, please tell me if I'm doing a good job. I want to make megawads and I even have a wad all set up to be a Hexen hub leveled styled megawad but with Doom, but I've held off making the levels because I just don't know if I'm good enough yet.

This level is kind of short, but like I said, it's just trial.
It's for Doom 2 btw.


http://www.mediafire.com/download/uhj6gm5s7jttbgt/Treatment+Plant.wad

Here's screenshot's since I should add these apparently.

http://i.imgur.com/nFYqHuv.png

http://i.imgur.com/2VJjcOo.png

http://i.imgur.com/7di7RQH.png

http://i.imgur.com/6W1EQ9H.png

http://i.imgur.com/c8i3Ih3.png

[scifista42]

Is this map for ZDoom (only tested in ZDoom), or in a demo friendly format like vanilla, limit-removing, or Boom?

[Du Mhan Yhu]

Screenshots?

[Hoodie]

scifista42 said:

Is this map for ZDoom (only tested in ZDoom), or in a demo friendly format like vanilla, limit-removing, or Boom?

I use GZdoom, which works fine. It's mostly vanilla though, maybe some limit-removing shit in it. Definitely not 256 segs per screen though.

Du Mhan Yhu said:

Screenshots?

It says I can't post attachments, so I don't know how to put them in here, sorry I'm stupid.

Besides don't you want to experience it in it's finest? :D

[Du Mhan Yhu]

Hoodie said:

It says I can't post attachments, so I don't know how to put them in here, sorry I'm stupid.

Besides don't you want to experience it in it's finest? :D

I, like many others like to see what I'm downloading :D

Edit:Has an old school feel and I assume its Zdoom since there are flats on walls. One of your hanging corpses seems kinda odd, as it gives the appearance of hanging through the floor. Some door textures are used bad.

http://postimg.org/image/gm0rspe9p/

[scifista42]

Use an image hosting site, like http://imgur.com/ (which I recommend), or another one.

[Hoodie]

Du Mhan Yhu said:

I, like many others like to see what I'm downloading :D

Edit:Has an old school feel and I assume its Zdoom since there are flats on walls. One of your hanging corpses seems kinda odd, as it gives the appearance of hanging through the floor. I do like the classic feel of it a lot though.

That's just how I feel the maps should be, thanks though that was the mission, and I'm hoping my megawad will feel like classic doom.

[Du Mhan Yhu]

Hoodie said:

That's just how I feel the maps should be, thanks though that was the mission, and I'm hoping my megawad will feel like classic doom.

Aside from what I mentioned I enjoyed it, maps with that feel are always nice :D

[Mithran Denizen]

I ran through the map, and found it adequate, but not super exciting. Certain areas of the level feel homogeneously flat and cramped, although overall the map has some nice use of space and height variation. The optional areas were a nice touch.

There is a bit more usage of the "boxy rooms and hallways separated by lots of doors," map design style than I usually prefer. So many doors everywhere seems to slow down gameplay more than necessary. I was craving more interestingly varied monster encounters, but I was never outright bored gunning down the opposition here, so no complaints.

The aesthetics are far from terrible, but I'm not super keen on all of the room designs and texture choices. Some of the different textures look a bit incoherent to me when combined. I think some of the detailing (e.g. the line of computer consoles jutting out from wall in one of the main rooms) borders on "filling space / getting in the way" more than it adds to the atmosphere. Putting hanging bodies in the middle of hallways with low ceilings also looks distracting to me. I did like the look of several areas, the way you played with contrasted lighting, etc. Solid classic visuals for the most part.

Keep making stuff! I think you're on the right track.

[TheOrganGrinder]

The slow start is an interesting thematic choice; the player passes through several rooms and doors, making several pathfinding choices, before their first monster encounter, and the looped layout of that first area - reception or front office? - left me wary of an ambush, with the threat of monsters roaming around the loop to catch me from an unanticipated direction. It serves to build a sense of anticipation and dread. I like the overall layout - from the main room, I ended up going south first, exploring the areas as far as the yellow doors, before turning north, so to have the level loop around, giving me the yellow key then letting me back into that area I'd already explored, was nice. I can see how that could play out differently - a player who doesn't explore south first finds themselves in a 'live' area with active threats after picking up the yellow key.

As a general observation, I don't feel the whole flats-as-walls, walls-as-flats things adds enough to this style of level to justify the cost of reduced compatibility. Seeing what I know to be a flat texture applied to a wall (or vice-versa) detracts from the intended 'classic Doom' feel of the level to no particular gain.

The dark computer maze snapped mostly to the 64-unit grid felt homogeneous, and its cramped corridors seemed to cause the spectres within to get 'hung up' at certain points, unable to take a step of the proper length to let them turn a corner, so they'd just mill back and forth at a T-junction. I feel the room with chainsaw ought to be tagged as a secret.

The cracked/bullet-marked sections of wall in the reception area at the start tell the player that minor variations in wall texture within the same 'family' exist only for visual interest and do not (in many places within this area, blatantly cannot) hide secrets. It feels a bit cheap that right at the start you tell the player "slightly-different walls don't hide secrets, ignore them" and then hide both the chainsaw and the blue key in places that rely on the player detecting a variation in wall texture and pressing it.

I feel the exit sequence is overextended; you've got a door marked 'exit,' then a lift marked 'exit,' then a twist in the corridor leading to a door with the familiar 'exit door' texture and only beyond that do you have the actual exit switch - and the only possible threat to the player in that sequence is the demon right beyond the first exit-marked door (I think most players not attempting to speedrun the level will have cleared out the two shotgun guys in the adjacent room and the imp visible through the window from there before proceeding to the marked exit door).

[Walter confetti]

Nice map, i had to complain about the bigdoor1 bad aligniment too, also i found strange the blue key room marked as secret zone, if you exchange it with another item like a berserk or similar, it could be better. Keep the blue key, but put it in another place in the map...

Also these two rooms need more height variation, looks rather bland.. for the rest is ok...

[scifista42]

I've played the map in Zandronum. Indeed, it was a ZDoom-compatible one, due to Hexen map format. UDMF is better, by the way, when you're already doing ZDoom. But simpler format (Doom 2, Boom) is generally better for beginners to get into basics, at least IMO.

The entire large first room was well detailed, but it has striken me as flat, and usage of default ceiling height everywhere was a bit underwhelming. On the other hand, I liked the vertically misaligned STUCCO, it gave the place a character, and gave me a good impression of "the mapper is not that much lazy".

I generally liked your techbase-y usage of detail, even if it was obviously unpolished and sometimes clumsy, and misalignments were seen frequently.

The layout was okay. Some corridors were cramped, usually not too badly, though. But there was a general crudeness in usage of height variation and room shapes. A lot of them were rectangular boxes, which alone gives an impression of unprofessionality. Both floor and ceiling height variation of the playable area could have been improved, preferably in a way that affects gameplay as much as possible.

Gameplay seemed rather naive and reminded me of my own early mapping. The monster density is low, and they're basically just waiting in the rooms to be shot. Feel free to put them into an advantageous position, use more traps and ambushes and more monsters to face the player at once from multiple directions, so that his exercise won't be merely shooting them, but avoiding his own death. You know, you've actually used traps and multiple monsters, but they weren't threatening nearly at all, anyway. Monsters would be attacking the player from different heights more often, and the player would be able to outmaneuver them by running up stairs / dropping into pits also more often, these things improve map dynamics.

Ammo balance was mostly okay, even if a bit tight. The blue key spectre trap could have been okay if I had ammo to deal with the spectres, but I ran out of ammo and had to use fist, which was annoying. I didn't have problems with health, because I barely ever got damaged.

The exit sequence noticeably lacked monsters, for its length.

That's all I can say. Not bad at all! Keep up the good work. In my view, this was the slightly better kind of an average map.

[Xegethra]

Yeah it looks like it could be quite fun.

I'll give it a play later on. Screenshots look nice.

[TheOrganGrinder]

In addition to what I said last night, a couple of further thoughts:

You've got doors locked by the blue and yellow keys towards the beginning of the map which contain useful items, and windows that let the player see the contents of these rooms long before they're able to access them. This is good! I'm also taking your description of the level to mean that this is intended as the MAP01 of a larger WAD, and in that context, it's not especially important that the player may well have cleared the level of monsters before returning to the reception area for these supplies - the player is stocking up for MAP02 and subsequent levels. However, I'd suggest doing something to present the player with an additional threat between their collection of the blue and yellow keys, and the return to the reception area to stock up - open up some monster closets along the route(s) between the keys and the locked doors, or teleport some monsters into the intervening areas. The lack of threats between the places where you acquire the keys, and the doors in reception that they open, (aside from the spectre ambush right on top of you when you collect the blue key) means that going back to get those supplies feels like a chore more than engaging gameplay.

This one is probably a matter of personal taste but I'd prefer that, where you've got barely-open doors hinting at passages beyond that can't be fully opened and are more like wall details than paths of progression, you use the Secret and Hidden linedef properties to obscure the areas behind those doors on the automap. It's another way of communicating to the player "you can't go this way." Otherwise, a player hunting for missed secrets, items, or monsters is likely to be drawn to the areas that their automap shows are still 'open,' which doesn't seem like something you're trying to encourage intentionally.