my first map - Payday.WAD

[Denim Destroyer]

*UPDATE*: Fixed switch near blue key not being repeatable preventing progression. Added fence to prevent the player from accessing outdoor secret from the yellow key room. Added teleporters to yellow key room in case the player falls in the pit. Slight enemy replacements.

*UPDATE 2*: Now on idgames!

LINK: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/p-r/payday

Single map for Doom 2 that replaces map01.

Tested with the latest versions of GZDoom and ZDoom. PrBoom wouldn't launch the map.

Hell has invaded on your day off! Now you need to go to work and pick up your last paycheck. Are you going to sit back and get in the unemployment line or are you ready to man up and fight for your last paycheck?

 

Credits to my cat Fluffy for keeping me sane during the making of this map.

Edited March 16, 2018 by Classicgamer6

[SuperArjunaButt]

That was alright for a first map.  Three major quibbles, from most to least (and I'll admit I didn't try to 100% it):

 

Spoiler

1. That area with the yellow key card, maybe I missed something, but I jumped down from it into the secret area with the megasphere and couldn't find a way back without noclipping.  Not sure what the plan was there.

2. That opening area, maybe do a little more to grab the player's interest.  You just start by walking throug a big ol' field o' nuthin.

3. The entrance after the front door does have some enemies, but I'm not feeling the drugstore full lighting.  Maybe add some strobing or blinking lights.  If it's your day off, maybe it's also the day off of whoever has to fix the lights :P
 

 

[xvertigox]

Here's my first playthrough with commentary:

 

 

I'll copy paste my description from the my Youtube video:

 

Spoiler

 

This is my first playthrough of Classicgamer6's first map Payday. The story behind the map according to the readme is you're picking up your last paycheck from work (hence Payday.wad).

 

Overall the map is very easy, sparsely detailed and quite short. I honestly don't mind the sparse detail as it reminds me of UAC_DEAD but with even less detail.

There was a level breaking bug where a switch was not set to be repeatable so if you didn't go through the door in time you were stuck and had to noclip your way through. Also the secret with megasphere let's you get stuck unless I missed how to get out?

 

I also don't see why this map isn't compatible with Boom? That seems silly and you should look into this and fix it.

 

This map is passable but not hugely enjoyable, the main reason being just how easy it is. There's one trap with a bunch of cacos but even then you're not trapped in the room and can just retreat or circle strafe.

 

I'd play this map again if v2.0 was released with more monsters and a bit more detailing.

 

 

If you were to add a bit more detail and a bunch more enemies it'd be a lot more fun. All in all for a first map I enjoyed it enough and I would definitely check out future maps you make.

[HAK3180]

Thanks for the map. Here are some thoughts:

 

First map or not, I enjoyed this and thought it had a Knee Deep in the Dead feel. I appreciated some of the details, including the lighting, which is definitely way beyond what I did in my first map. 

 

At the initial fork, just past a former commando trap after getting the super shotgun, the door there appears to be a D1 and not a DR. I don't know if that was intended or not.

 

I thought it was ambitious to try to tackle a crate maze in your first map, but I liked it. Two things though: usually I like to see multiple walkable levels in cratemaze situations. You could go on some tops from the top of the stairs, but there did not appear to be any reason to. And also, the automap makes that room appear to be empty. So I don't know why you hid all the crates. 

 

I do agree that there were some places that could use a little more detail. I'm not saying add it here, but maybe keep it in mind in other maps that you don't often want to have too much of the same continuous texture.

 

I didn't know how to get the blue key. If jumping is required, you ought to say that, but it appears others have mentioned a bug requiring noclip.

 

I only got two or three secrets, but I liked how they were obvious but not obvious. There was some sort of hint. In other words, if I miss a secret, I usually either like knowing that I missed it or being able to say "ah, I should have noticed that" when I do discover it/it is revealed to me.

 

I'm not a combat mapping expert by any means, but I thought it was solid. Some traps here and there, some threatening situations, and not a lot of mindless monster placement. Hell nobles at the end maybe not the greatest choice, but I did not find the combat boring in most places.

 

 

So please do keep mapping. Best of luck.

[Denim Destroyer]

Thank you everyone for the feedback. I updated the download link with some of the issues fixed.

I balanced the map around being able to go left or right at the beginning but one issue I noticed was that both sides have to be balanced around that idea. In future maps I may keep this fork in road gameplay idea but will most likely not have those sections take up the majority of the map.

9 hours ago, SuperArjunaButt said:

1. That area with the yellow key card, maybe I missed something, but I jumped down from it into the secret area with the megasphere and couldn't find a way back without noclipping.  Not sure what the plan was there.

One of the secrets involves accessing that outdoor area but I didn't take into account that the player could easily get to the secret from the yellow key room.

 

9 hours ago, xvertigox said:

Here's my first playthrough with commentary:

Thanks for the video! I was interested in seeing how other people would have played this.

 

1 hour ago, HAK3180 said:

I thought it was ambitious to try to tackle a crate maze in your first map, but I liked it. Two things though: usually I like to see multiple walkable levels in cratemaze situations. You could go on some tops from the top of the stairs, but there did not appear to be any reason to. And also, the automap makes that room appear to be empty. So I don't know why you hid all the crates. 

The crate maze is one of my favorite parts of the map. I chose to make the crates invisible on the automap so people wouldn't use it to easily bypass the maze, I wasn't sure how that would be received so I am currently iffy on if invisible crate mazes should be included in future maps.

[HAK3180]

Yes, I hear you. One thing you could do is raise at least the highest crate level to ceiling level (a la E2M2), so that one couldn't just walk into the room and see the whole maze on the automap. If there's no walking on the highest level anyway, then you wouldn't really lose anything by raising those to ceiling level. I don't think it's a huge deal, either way. Seems not a lot of players use the automap much.

 

One other thing I forgot to mention is a rule of thumb I read somewhere, that whenever you have a floor texture change, also have a height change. Sometimes, even if that height change is only 2 or 4, it can make a big visual difference. I'm referring to the very start where the road kinda looks like it's just painted there. I suggest you raise the road by 4 or 8 or lower the rocky section around it by 4 or 8.

[Pegleg]

9 minutes ago, HAK3180 said:

One other thing I forgot to mention is a rule of thumb I read somewhere, that whenever you have a floor texture change, also have a height change. Sometimes, even if that height change is only 2 or 4, it can make a big visual difference. I'm referring to the very start where the road kinda looks like it's just painted there. I suggest you raise the road by 4 or 8 or lower the rocky section around it by 4 or 8.

Personally, I've found that 2 units works well enough to convey a difference visually, but not impede the player or make the movement jerky. At least, it works well for rugs/carpet. It should work for roads, too.

[Reisal]

Let's see how this is..Will give it a run later on.

[guineu]

Maybe it's just me (playing at 8 am) but the ring of Cacos in the blue key seemed a bit out of tone with the balance of the map. As someone said the map is fairly easy, no problem with that. Except for the BK fight, which seems out of balance and much harder than everything else in the map. Take a second too long to react and it's pretty much an inescapable situation as the Cacos body block every escape option and fire comes from every single direction. I'd either reduce the number of Cacos there or make the rest of the map more challenging.

[Bauul]

23 hours ago, xvertigox said:

I also don't see why this map isn't compatible with Boom? That seems silly and you should look into this and fix it.

It's funny how over on the "what's your favorite source port thread" we were just talking about how there's this idea that (G)ZDoom maps aren't allowed to be simple, and that simple maps should always target Boom.

 

While I haven't opened the wad and had a look, perhaps he made it in UDMF and has a bunch of offset floor textures which PRBoom+ will never support.

[Denim Destroyer]

That's what I did. I couldn't figure out how to align ceiling textures which bothered me a lot so I used UDMF. In hindsight that was most likely an unwise decision.

[therektafire]

You can't align floor/ceiling textures in any format except UDMF. Well technically I think you can in vanilla but it requires some weird node builder trickery and I think it comes with some other issues as well, I remember reading a thread on the subject a few months ago but I don't remember the link

 

Edit: never mind, the trick was actually to create patches with offsets into a texture instead of the start of the texture, link to thread 

 

Edited February 2, 2018 by therektafire

[Reisal]

 

[doom keeps me alive]

Pretty fun! Nice map!