OFFICE COMPLEX - Map Feedback Wanted

[Poormetheus]

This is my first map. It represents a lot of work and checking out both this forum and YouTube for hints / tips on map-making in doom.



It is designed for BRUTAL DOOM on DOOM II (MAP01). I think it is best played on Hurt Me Plenty or NIGHTMARE; I've striven to achieve some kind of balance there.



All feedback about style and technique would be much appreciated! Here is the download link for the .wad:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/35d2g7wcbyohaxu/Office_Complex_PM.wad

[HavoX]

Can you post some screenshots, please?

Some people might want to know what the map may look like before downloading it...

EDIT:

Poormetheus said:

http://i.imgur.com/pkXd7KM.png

S'not what I meant, but what the hell... I suppose it'll do.

[Liberation]

Ok I've given it a run through, not with brutal doom thou.

My thoughts

1. Reasonable use of 3d floors, worked well for the most part.
2. Layout has potential
3. 39mb sound wave file wasn't great
4. Unpegged doortracks and unaligned textures - easy fix with your editor
5. Bland looking rooms with little detail and massive ceiling heights - mix some ceiling heights and add some stuff to the walls and ceilings, computers, lights etc play about with the lighting as well, make places darker than others depending on where you put the lights.
6. Not everyone will realise that the computers are switches, so you might want to change that.

Get some more practise in with the basics, start with one of your computer rooms and make it more interesting, then expand the theme to the rest of the level.

[Dragonfly]

HavoX's statement holds more weight considering the weight of your wad. 40+MB.

1. Do you own the rights to use the ambient music you have in your wad?
2. Compress the music. There is absolutely no valid reason to use the WAV format for music when MP3 or OGG would decrease the filesize greatly without any noticable loss to the audio quality.
3. I noticed a lot of basic texture misalignments.
4. A number of doors hadn't had their track textures unpegged.
5. The offices are samey and boring
6. the AV fight in one of the offices lacked much to hide behind.
7. The strobing is mostly annoying, thankfully I don't have epilepsy.

All in all I didn't enjoy myself while playing this but I persevered until the end to see if any redeemable or interesting fights occurred. None did however. It's mostly a bland key hunt.

Here are some screenshots for everyone else.

[Poormetheus]

Thanks for taking the time, people.

I appreciate your (constructive) criticism :)

Indeed, shame on me for not compressing the audio file.

[Poormetheus]

Liberation said:

Ok I've given it a run through, not with brutal doom thou.


5. Bland looking rooms with little detail and massive ceiling heights - mix some ceiling heights and add some stuff to the walls and ceilings, computers, lights etc play about with the lighting as well, make places darker than others depending on where you put the lights.


Get some more practise in with the basics, start with one of your computer rooms and make it more interesting, then expand the theme to the rest of the level.

That's good advice. I'll admit that some of the rooms are more inspired than others. I am still coming to terms with some editing basics; also, breakable glass windows would be a nice feature on an office-type level.

[Liberation]

If I have the time, I will edit one of your rooms and show what I mean so to speak. However I'm rather busy at the moment!

Good luck with your mapping, once you have the basics the rest comes in time. I remember the first maps I made some 15/16 years ago and they were complete shite :-)

[Reisal]

What about making it without Brutal overtones? I take it this runs fine without it? Also, you can just use a MIDI file for music and make the file much smaller. Compressing the audio music into OGG made the WAD file 1/10th its size.

You're lacking co-op player spots as well, you might want to put the top flats of the gray computer monitors to CEIL5_1 since it matches well with it.

Also, is this based on the Resident Evil 2 police station, as the music tag says it's an RE2 track. That definitely cannot be put on /idgames/ unless the track is removed or replaced with something else. See if anything here fancies your taste.

[Poormetheus]

Glaice said:

Also, is this based on the Resident Evil 2 police station, as the music tag says it's an RE2 track. That definitely cannot be put on /idgames/ unless the track is removed or replaced with something else. See if anything here fancies your taste.

Thanks for your feedback! Point taken with the audio file; because I was a music major I am averse to MIDI songs. They send a shiver down my spine and not in a good way, so I am a no-compromise music guy. Aubrey Hodge's soundtrack is more my bag, so I might just add one of his pieces.

[nxGangrel]

I love this level. The simplicity of the design and the monotone texturing was nice, though I think some colored textures here and there could have been used. I really like the dynamic lighting and the effects. And the semi realism of the location.

While agree on what the other guys said about the music track, I still liked it and though it fit well. (Though I personally would have used a midi)
The only thing I didn't like was a few of the textures were misaligned, and some could have used better detailing. A few places were pretty empty and didn't have much to look at.

Overall I liked it. It needs more work, but I thought it was good. With more improvements to your mapping, I think this style could make a good 5 or so level wad.

[illuknisaa]

I played with "hurt me plenty" difficulty, with brutal doom 20b and custom brightmap mod.

Like Liberation said the layout has potential. I kinda liked the eerie feeling the music, office setting and BD brought gave to the map. It was fun to see the clean office space and then your bloody foot prints after you've rummaged through.

What I really didn't like was all the impassable lines around computers and rooms that were lit with blinking lights. Jumping is part of brutal doom and making some parts impassable to jump over while it looks you could. It feels really odd for the player. Blinking lights gets old before you even see them.

Map also lacks in interesting encounters. I was able to deal with pretty much all enemies one by one and there were barely any ambushes. It would have been cool to waltz in to the red key with minimal resistance and then the light go flashing with red and have monsters come out of the closet.

As a minor nitpick (apart from all the texture related problems) the "computer terminal button" -mechanic should be explained better. It's ok to use non traditional button textures but you should tell players what texture is a button and what is not (I didn't see you suing the texture as a nonbutton so that is good). Maybe lock the player right at the start into a small room with only the button texture so the player can understand that computer terminal is a button.

Poormetheus said:

also, breakable glass windows would be a nice feature on an office-type level.

You can make breakable glass by using the special "break glass". I've used it to make vent grates that you can shoot. You just need to make a simple switch with "glass" -texture and "broken glass" -texture. Add a fitting sound effect and you have glass you can break.
http://zdoom.org/wiki/GlassBreak
http://zdoom.org/wiki/ANIMDEFS

edit: Also putting cacos (and lost souls) in tight spaces negates the biggest reason to use cacos. The red strobe room is fine but the exit tunnel makes cacos flying completely pointless. I would rather use imp variant or a pinky.

[Reisal]

You have to remember /idgames/ will not accept copyrighted MP3/OGG/WAV music in upload submissions, maybe sidelining from Aubrey's stuff but I doubt letting a Resident Evil 2 track as music will be allowed. You may just have to find another source or even commission somebody to make a track for you.

[MrSkeltal]

The Good:

I liked the PSX/Doom 64 inspired atmosphere with the music and moody lighting.

The open ended nature of the level was good. Some areas, such as the starting one, looked decent.

Moderate enemy quantity. Way too many level designers these days believe having 100-200+ high tier enemies per level equals challenge, when the only thing it does is pad out combat encounters and make levels take too long to finish.

The Bad:

Compress dat music m8

I played this on Ultra-Violence without Brutal Doom and there's way too little ammo. I was fine until the room with the red lighting, upon which I had to resort to monster in-fighting and, once I ran into a Revenant, went "lol nope" and cheated to give myself some.

Strobe/flashing lights are way too annoying in big areas. The first office area with all the pinkies and shotgunners early on needs some static lights in some places. Once you're half-way through the level after getting the blue key it's disorienting and borderline unplayable with the combination of red flashing lights and near pitch-black areas.

Some areas seem to be lacking in detail. That room with the Arch-vile needs some cover since otherwise the only tactic against it is herding out of the room. Maybe try to switch up textures in some rooms so it's not all grey.

The pinkies that get alerted once you fire a shot at the beginning of the level are unable to reach the player if you stay there. It's also pretty easy to stay in the starting room for a while shooting all the imps and shotgunners. Maybe try adding the Deaf flag to some of them so they activate once they see the player.