I finished my first Doom map

[Skorly]

I finally finished a map! yay. Hopefully, it isn't too bad tho. It was tested with ZDoom and the game configuration was GZDoom: Doom 2 (Hexen format).

Version 1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2pdpoimjif02tsi/BROWNMAP.rar?dl=0

Version 2: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ulug3qrhqzy6r7/BROWNMAP2.rar?dl=0

Edited May 25, 2017 by Skorly

[Maisth]

Aren't wads supossed to come in a WAD Format not dbs?

[Skorly]

Oh crap, linked the wrong one... We're of to a great start. Edit: Should be fixed now

 

Edited May 22, 2017 by Skorly

[Misty]

Also,include screenshots. 

[Maisth]

I think its a good map well designed there are some misaligned textures and at the end the door it isn't lowpegged

 

Though there are some things that bother me, to start with the first area its very hard if you don't know what you are doing, and there are very few weapons.

 

Also the ammo is a litte bit scatter consedering that you put high tier monsters right in the first area of the map.

 

Overall for a first map its pretty good but challenging

[Phade102]

While I haven't downloaded it, from the screenshots, I must say thats an interesting combination of textures. It actually works surprisingly well, almost like some ancient ruin. was that what you were going for? Even if you weren't, it works!

[Rosh Fragger]

Keep it up yo!

[schwerpunk]

Good variety of visuals.

[axdoomer]

Nice map. Do you use any ZDoom or Hexen specific features? Else you could make it vanilla compatible. 

[Skorly]

Thank you all for your kind words! 

 

22 hours ago, Maisth said:

I think its a good map well designed there are some misaligned textures and at the end the door it isn't lowpegged

 

Though there are some things that bother me, to start with the first area its very hard if you don't know what you are doing, and there are very few weapons.

 

Also the ammo is a litte bit scatter consedering that you put high tier monsters right in the first area of the map.

 

Overall for a first map its pretty good but challenging

6

I never came in any ammo problems but that is probably because I designed it lol. I probably could add a rocket launcher or something lie that to solve the ammo and weapon problem. 

 

21 hours ago, Phade102 said:

While I haven't downloaded it, from the screenshots, I must say thats an interesting combination of textures. It actually works surprisingly well, almost like some ancient ruin. was that what you were going for? Even if you weren't, it works!

Thanks! I was kinda going for a Quake 1 look.

20 hours ago, axdoomer said:

Nice map. Do you use any ZDoom or Hexen specific features? Else you could make it vanilla compatible. 

I don't think I have actually. I guess I could look into doing that.

[Reisal]

On 5/22/2017 at 2:40 PM, axdoomer said:

Nice map. Do you use any ZDoom or Hexen specific features? Else you could make it vanilla compatible. 

 

There's wall textures used on floors.

[Phade102]

@Skorly I see, I see. I admire your effort, its very difficult to get a quake 1 look with the default doom 2 textures. I still like the look of the map though!

[baja blast rd.]

Hey, I played your map. 

 

- Early on, there is a lot of single shotgun combat against non-threatening mid-tier monsters (with some pinkies scattered around). There is a chaingun too, which is slightly faster, but there is also an abundance of shell ammo, so when I'm constantly encountering shellboxes when I already have 35+ shells, I'm going to use mostly the single shotgun against lower-threat monsters, and save my chaingun ammo for potentially dangerous encounters. This makes the earlygoing a bit dull. This berserk pack would have been nice to have earlier.

 

- Part of that single shotgun combat happens behind doors. It's perfectly possible to charge into that room and not doorcamp, but your monster placement before this (hitscanners, a PE), coupled with the relatively weak armament, means that I wasn't so inclined to do so. The layout in general is quite door-heavy and monster placement is also largely incidental, instead of rooted in traps or set pieces. This is not such a good combination because a lot of the monsters will wander to doors, where fights will be one-directional and not so exciting. 

 

- I noticed that your doors seem to use a SR trigger (or whatever the Doom-in-Hexen equivalent is), which means that unlike conventional DR doors, you can't open and close them while they are partly open. This is somewhat bad, because I have to wait for the door to close completely to open it again, which gets annoying when it happens multiple times. 

 

- Some misc. visual stuff, just stuff that jumped out at me. When you have two textures completely parallel to one another like this with no border, it can look kind of rough. I would either set the marble/bars part back 16-32 units or have it jut out. Some misaligned rock here. Grabbing the YK for some reason raised a wall that I don't think should have raised, and the sky appeared. Playing in GZDoom 2.4.0. 

 

- Some stuff I liked: this vile reveal, which is probably the one thing that felt a bit scary, and the bridge that raises over here was pretty cool. The apparent non-linearity of the layout is also nice, as were a few of the darker, eerier areas. 

 

- I don't think you'd do any harm whatsoever by simple moving the SSG, which is only intended for 3-5 monsters, to an earlier part of the map. Fights wouldn't be any less threatening than they are with it; they would be more fun though. I didn't look for secrets in my original playthrough, but secrets shouldn't be necessary to have a good time.

 

[GarrettChan]

36 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

- I don't think you'd do any harm whatsoever by simple moving the SSG, which is only intended for 3-5 monsters, to an earlier part of the map. Fights wouldn't be any less threatening than they are with it; they would be more fun though. I didn't look for secrets in my original playthrough, but secrets shouldn't be necessary to have a good time.

After playing the map, I wanted to say the same thing... Since the map doesn't trap player and force the player to use the Shotgun, giving the SSG along with the Backpack could be a good idea, in order to have a better fight with the Arch-vile.

 

I also like turning dark to increase the feeling of something coming, and the light coming from the crack of the ceiling is pretty cool.

[Skorly]

10 hours ago, rdwpa said:

Hey, I played your map. 

 

1- Early on, there is a lot of single shotgun combat against non-threatening mid-tier monsters (with some pinkies scattered around). There is a chaingun too, which is slightly faster, but there is also an abundance of shell ammo, so when I'm constantly encountering shellboxes when I already have 35+ shells, I'm going to use mostly the single shotgun against lower-threat monsters, and save my chaingun ammo for potentially dangerous encounters. This makes the earlygoing a bit dull. This berserk pack would have been nice to have earlier.

 

2- Part of that single shotgun combat happens behind doors. It's perfectly possible to charge into that room and not doorcamp, but your monster placement before this (hitscanners, a PE), coupled with the relatively weak armament, means that I wasn't so inclined to do so. The layout in general is quite door-heavy and monster placement is also largely incidental, instead of rooted in traps or set pieces. This is not such a good combination because a lot of the monsters will wander to doors, where fights will be one-directional and not so exciting. 

 

3- I noticed that your doors seem to use a SR trigger (or whatever the Doom-in-Hexen equivalent is), which means that unlike conventional DR doors, you can't open and close them while they are partly open. This is somewhat bad, because I have to wait for the door to close completely to open it again, which gets annoying when it happens multiple times. 

 

4- Some misc. visual stuff, just stuff that jumped out at me. When you have two textures completely parallel to one another like this with no border, it can look kind of rough. I would either set the marble/bars part back 16-32 units or have it jut out. Some misaligned rock here. Grabbing the YK for some reason raised a wall that I don't think should have raised, and the sky appeared. Playing in GZDoom 2.4.0. 

 

- Some stuff I liked: this vile reveal, which is probably the one thing that felt a bit scary, and the bridge that raises over here was pretty cool. The apparent non-linearity of the layout is also nice, as were a few of the darker, eerier areas. 

 

- I don't think you'd do any harm whatsoever by simple moving the SSG, which is only intended for 3-5 monsters, to an earlier part of the map. Fights wouldn't be any less threatening than they are with it; they would be more fun though. I didn't look for secrets in my original playthrough, but secrets shouldn't be necessary to have a good time.

 

5

9

1- Didn't really consider that. You think moving the SSG to the start would help with that?

 

2- The number of doors was somewhat intentional. I wanted to give the player the option to go in all Rambo or to pick monsters of from doors or corners. This is also why if you play the map slowly, you will never find yourself surrounded. But I guess I could lock the player in more if that leads into more interesting gameplay. 

 

3- Didn't know about the door thing. Have to fix that at some point.

 

4- It's supposed to raise but not that high. It works in ZDoom, but that is also the only source port that I played it in cause I assumed that it would not make that much of a difference.  

 

16 hours ago, Glaice said:

 

There's wall textures used on floors.

 

But I thought it looked cool :/

Edited May 24, 2017 by Skorly

[BigDickBzzrak]

Great little map. The only thing I didn't quite like is the texturing. IMO the brown and green bricks don't look too good in the combination you used them in. Also the alignment wasn't the best. But other than that, I liked it a lot. 10/10

ZDoom 2.8.1 FDA attached

brownmap_fda_bzzrak.zip

[baja blast rd.]

18 hours ago, Skorly said:

1- Didn't really consider that. You think moving the SSG to the start would help with that?

 

2- The number of doors was somewhat intentional. I wanted to give the player the option to go in all Rambo or to pick monsters of from doors or corners. This is also why if you play the map slowly, you will never find yourself surrounded. But I guess I could lock the player in more if that leads into more interesting gameplay. 

 

3- Didn't know about the door thing. Have to fix that at some point.

 

4- It's supposed to raise but not that high. It works in ZDoom, but that is also the only source port that I played it in cause I assumed that it would not make that much of a difference.  

 

Yeah the main point of moving the SSG earlier on would be to reduce that sort of combat.

In a map of this length, early impressions can really shape the way the player approaches the map for the entire playthrough. I usually prefer playing aggressively, but the early gameplay -- a combination of hitscanners, low DPS relative to monster HP, and a pain elemental -- got me into a 'take less damage and make less of a mess' mood. After that, camping was consistently rewarded (by me barely taking damage while doing so), and I had no weapons that I'd find fun to play aggressively with, so at that point I felt no reason to do so. Also later placements (the shotgunners behind the windows near the berserk, the last pain elemental) made that decision feel correct. Imagine another start: I get the SSG in the start area (close enough that I can see it, but far away enough that I have to run for it), the pain elemental that appears with the cacos has been moved to the start area (encouraging me to either aggressively take it out or quickly leave the start area -- both being Rambo-like approaches). At the next doorway, I get the berserk, and the yard is mostly full of punchable monsters, so I head in to fight them. Even if you don't change much else about the layout, the option of charging into rooms is going to feel more appealing than it currently is. 

 

If you want to allow for smooth run 'n' gun play, it's usually a good idea to minimize the number of doors that aren't opened by keys, and also hallways. This is one of skillsaw's main principles. They just get in the way, for the most part. It also looks cooler when you can see deep into a building, for example, and doors get in the way of that too. And I'd also suggest making doors open-only unless you have a good reason not to, because having to continually reopen them doesn't add much but nuisance.  

 

Also, the thing with using wall textures as flats and vice versa is that materials often have directional cues baked into them. A good example is SLADWALL, which has slime dripping downwards, so would look kind of weird as a floor, for the most part. The TANROCK doesn't look so bad in those shots, but it's something to look out for. 

 

[Skorly]

Hello everyone!

I made a second version of the map where I tried to fix as many of the complaints from the previous version.

 

Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ulug3qrhqzy6r7/BROWNMAP2.rar?dl=0

[TreeSquid]

I just gave your level a go, and I actually enjoyed it :) I thought it was pretty fun, and thought it was a good opener. The map itself has an interesting layout, and has lots of space to move around which is great! I also dig the Arch vile and the lights going out....it spooked me and was a nice touch! Thumbs up from me!

 

The only complaint I can think of is......the ground texture for myself is just a blue/red checkerboard, but I am using ZDaemon to play. Seriously though I think the map is good :)!

[baja blast rd.]

On 5/25/2017 at 10:19 AM, Skorly said:

Hello everyone!

I made a second version of the map where I tried to fix as many of the complaints from the previous version.

 

Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ulug3qrhqzy6r7/BROWNMAP2.rar?dl=0

Well done, the layout flows a lot more smoothly now. Some of the changes, like the slightly increased monster count and the exit HKs coming out with the RL pickup, suit the player's stronger armament well. 

[DAZZER]

Really good map for the first one :) small and action packed. I enjoy the layout and decoration. Monster Placement is Fun but maybe you give a little bit to much Medkits ^^ Your lighting is good but I saw some alignment Fails. Keep up mapping :)

[Phade102]

@Skorly I just wanted to add, that if you want to use wall textures on floors that completely your choice. however, note that Wall textures on floors is a zdoom/gzdoom only feature, and ports like boom and such will not run the map with it. theres absolutly nothing wrong with that, in the end map for yourself and no one else, If you map with the intent of other people liking your maps, you'll end up not enjoying the map yourself. Look at Disjunction, which is a rather new wad, but its made by one guy who tested it privately. He built the maps for himself, and damn some are hell hard, but I could tell he enjoyed making them.