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[Zeratul 982]

For the people who played my Stone Stratagems wad, what do you think of it so far? Any suggestions, comments, recommendations, stuff that needs to be taken out or added, etc.?

As you can see in my sig, I am unfortunately slacking on it's progress and declared a temporary time-out. I'm a little hung on map18.

[Guest pickle_hammer]

it was good

[elbryan42]

one of THE BEST megawads i've ever played. alot of great ideas in it.

[nightmare imp]

It is clearly awsome and you should keep up the good work and I give you good credit.

[Disorder]

asskisser... ;)

[Lazer]

Lots of fun. The levels have a fairly good size as well. But they need two things:
-More detail
-New textures
I have been pumping out textures like crazy. If you want I can make some for you. Also, a while back (a little more than a month ago) I asked Iikka to look at my levels and give me some pointers. He told me that you are better off working on a smaller amount of levels and putting more detail in them room by room, instead of putting together one big set of levels that have some rooms which are way better than the rest of the level. So I've gone back and added more detail to my levels. You should too. After adding all that detail, you may find or come across new ideas for later levels. What got me through many of my levels was learning new tricks. I know them all (unless there are ones I haven't heard of or discovered), so you can ask me. I'll be glad to help.
Another thing is that I have some levels that never quite made it to being publised. If you want, I can fix them up, make them look better, etc... and you can use them (with some credit to me of coarse).

EDIT: I'll just post the whole email.

Hey.. Sorry it took so long, but I did finally look at your maps the other
day. Overall I don't think they're too bad. Parts of them are actually
pretty good, the main problem being that they're not very consistent...
Often most of the level is overshadowed by a location or two that are much
better than the rest.

The only advice I can really give you is that you should pay as much
attention to every room in a level... It's really just a matter of patience,
and going back through the level and detailing and lighting everything to
look just as good as the best part. There are areas in your levels that
clearly show you have the ability to build nice architecture and set up
atmospheric lighting. You just have to make sure that every location adheres
to the same standard of quality. Maybe you shouldn't try to build 6 levels
at once, but spend more time on a single level...


Iikka

[Zigmund]

I'd have to say that i had more fun playing your earlyer levels (1-10 i think) than the later levels. Though it was cool watching as your skills as a level designer grow as the levels progessed. But there was just that "something" about the lower levels, even though they lacked detail, that made them more enjoyable to play.
Maybe like Lazer said go back and add detail to your lower levels and along the way you will probably come up with more ideas for future levels.
As for your future levels why don't you release them in packs of four levels, so like your next release would contain levels 17-20 and the next would be 21-24 and so on. This would give you time to have a break between levels and get some new ideas.

[Zeratul 982]

Well, levels 14, 15, and 31 were levels I originally made for Doom 1, but I imported and improved them somewhat. You see, when I finished map13 - "Deep Down..." I was running out of ideas. I had some other maps on Doom 1 that I thought would go good with the rest.

Notice that those 3 maps don't have the BSTONE or BRICK textures, but lots of STONE1, SP_HOT1, and BROWN96 textures, which are seen a lot in Doom 1 maps. Also notice that map14 - "No Limits" is the only level that contains "Hell Decors" and decorations like skulls on a skew and so forth. It was one of my first maps made.

When I began to build map16, I was building the first room and the big area in the center blankly. I was making it up as I went along. After the big area I couldn't continue working on it for about a month. Just call it a case of "WAD-ers block" or something. But now, it's finished and is called "Slough Base" because of the use of GSTVINE textures.

I am now working on map18 - "Magma Fortress" which I am unfortunately stuck on but have a good start on it. I think it's on the wad, but I worked on it a little more and got the 3D bridge effect to work properly. I added and improved the fortress' main room.