RE: Mapping Tips, Please Critique.

[watto3699]

Hey Everyone,

In response to the over whelming amount of helpful and useful information in relation to mapping that I received in my last post, I finally was able to create a map that I'm not particularly proud of but is an accurate representation of my current mapping skill level. Please analyse my map in reference to actually good maps and respond to me depicting the worst parts of my design and what I can do to improve on my flaws. There is only one map in this WAD as I did not wish to continue further without proper understanding of what a good map is. There are a couple of secrets in there which will hopefully make this process a little easier for you all to endure. I put a lot, if not too much, time into the Aesthetics of the level and if the detail is poor or is out of line for a doom map lease feel free to critique that as well.

 

Thank you for your time.

-Watto

Aesthetics.zip

[Royal_Sir]

The detailing is relatively fine. You could proportion that desk better though.

 

Needs a better sense of gameplay flow. Right now its mostly clear this room, move on, clear this room. The larger rooms and the ones with the outside enemies attacking you felt more fun. The last area had a flow, I think, and better variation in height. Do more rooms like that. Less doors generally means more flow.

 

Change up the floor and ceiling textures sometimes, instead of that wood all the time.

 

More dynamic places that you revisit, like a monster closet or something would be great for where the blue key door was.

 

Basically, do what you did beyond the blue key door, that was the strongest part of the map. The beginning was alright, because it genuinely felt like a beginning.

 

Stuck monsters outside. Give them more space to walk around.

 

I'm not one of those people, but some will complain that they can't reach 100% on the level because they couldnt get every item, namely the ammo outside the building. I'd recommend making the outside accessibile via secret or something, letting the player have a playable contrast to the formal interior helps shakes things up. I did like what you did with the windows, you can do more with an enterable outside at those parts as well.

 

Work on shapes that arent just glorified square rooms. Even though I did like the main hub room, though, again, you could have offered more gameplay there via repopulation or something.

 

 

[watto3699]

On 7/2/2017 at 3:42 AM, Royal_Sir said:

"The detailing is relatively fine. You could proportion that desk better though." - Desk removed and replaced with a room which in my opinion has better flow.

 

On 7/2/2017 at 3:42 AM, Royal_Sir said:

"Needs a better sense of gameplay flow. Right now its mostly clear this room, move on, clear this room. The larger rooms and the ones with the outside enemies attacking you felt more fun. The last area had a flow, I think, and better variation in height. Do more rooms like that. Less doors generally means more flow." - I replaced the rooms leading up to the blue key with a larger room that has a interesting game play mechanic, nothing new or original though just better than what it was.

 

On 7/2/2017 at 3:42 AM, Royal_Sir said:

"Change up the floor and ceiling textures sometimes, instead of that wood all the time." -Changed the textures of many of the places where I felt that the wood texture was over used.

In the process of re-doing the map I also removed the inability to %100 the map and inserted more monster closets in places where I felt relevant.

However, I could not figure out for the life of me how to repopulate an area, I was planning to do so with the main hub area but couldn't :c

Please if you could play through the map again to assess the new changes and decide if it's any good.

AestheticsV2.zip

[everennui]

I didn't play any previous versions and I'm not sure what kind of input you've gotten, but I'm in the map ATM. My first impression was... "geez, this is cramped" then I thought your map might translate better as M.U.D. You enter a room. There's a door to the north and east. The rooms are just boxes (so far). There's one section where there are about 5-6 zombiemen outside of a barred off window. They are immobile and don't fire at me.

I'm going back in.

Okay. Much of the same.

Keep your eye on the size of the monsters hitboxes, because that's how big the monster actually is. If a portion of it overlaps another sector it will likely be affected by the taller one. The elevator in the exit room inconsistently carries the floor lamps.

Your exit wasn't very clear to me. I exited level when i didn't want to and there was still 20% monsters left.

If this is a first map. I'll give it a 4/5. There are a few minor issues, but you've got enough in your bag of tricks to do something in the future.

If this is not a first map. I'll give it a 2/5. Monsters didn't really seem to be placed for any particular reason - just haphazardly because they're expected to be there. There wasn't anything that really offered a challenge. I had to use only keyboard to give myself a little more difficulty.

Recommendations: Play hard wads until you're good and then consciously/subconsciously steal ideas from those authors.

[watto3699]

Yes, this was my first attempt at a fully flushed out map. All of my previous maps were basically tests to figure out how to properly use the map builder. I'll take your advice and play through other harder maps and implement some of their ideas into my own. 

Thanks for the feed back anyway c:

-Watto

 

[Plusw]

Promising overall, but I feel like you could pay a bit more attention to the way you use space. Currently the encounters are pretty uninteresting and the map itself feels quite linear. I would recommend thinking more about where your monsters are, what kind of play they encourage, and if that play is interesting/challenging enough to be fun.

 

Also, verticality. currently the map is pretty flat and verticality is a great way to make a map less linear and more interesting to fight/explore in.