Scotty

Absolutely! Feel free to build in Doom format if you wish, but be sure to test them in boom format to ensure everything functions as expected. Otex only please (my reasoning is here), with the one exception being the secret map - addressed below. However many maps we get. I don't expect 32 maps, if we do reach that then i will figure something out... Ok here is the deal. Someone immediately pitched this idea and i thought it would make for a cool secret map - but it will lose impact if there are randomly 3-4 of these kinda maps... So i am accepting one single 50 Shades type map for the secret map, decide amongst yourselves who is making it - or collaborate! Or compete for that one slot :) I am assuming anyone who wants to make such a map knows the limitation already... only the GRAYTALL, DOORTRAK and FIREBLU textures are allowed, and the only flats are F_SKY1 plus one of your own choosing.

Difficulty settings will be eventually added in, yes :)

I considered just using stock stuff and equally considered allowing absolute texture freedom but i want to minimise the energy i have to expend on running this tbh, otherwise running this would quickly become unfun for me. OTEX is easy because i can just basically drop it in and it gives people a huge thematic range to work with, as well as offering something a bit different, as rd says. I don't like mixing of OTEX and vanilla, with very few exceptions - most vanilla textures have an OTEX analogue anyway.

Fun list :D I just want to shout out this goliath cargo ship from Interception II (Map27): ...and yet another Pinchy effort, from the unreleased Cereal Killer:

Randomly decided to play through this. Map06 rubbed me the wrong way so i didn't finish that map. 40oz mapping and thematic work solid as expected. Shoutout to sonny666 who i think is fairly new to the scene and made a pretty smart map here. Those pseudo-keys were pretty unusual.

Decided to check this out, recorded a blind demo for it, attached (very long though!). First i just want to say that "this is bad simply because i found it difficult" criticism is ignorable rubbish, to be blunt. Some food for thought from me: - Nice job with the layout, lots of instances of being able to see into areas you cannot get into yet, paths feeding back into previous sections, areas opening up to create new gameplay spaces, etc etc - Yeah, ammo is tight (smart move to include an early berzerk, i used it a lot), although i never actually fully ran out myself, and health was pretty scarce for the most part. Additionally there is some pretty dickish hitscanner placement at off-angles that can shred you if you don't know they are there. This combination led me to feeling like i was straining at the leash to an extent, playing slowly so that i did not lose all my health - although i do personally like to play aggressively. This is not a criticism per se, more an observation, as it is up to you how you would like to pace the map - oppressively slow paced gameplay can be a very powerful atmospheric tool... although most people will find it frustrating. Sometimes giving more rockets and cells doesn't necessarily change the difficulty of a map but merely makes it less grindy. - With arena type slaughtery fights it is important to consider the shape of the area, where enemies are going to attack from and how they are going to bunch up. The red key and final fights are basically just square/circular type arenas that lend themselves to circle strafe abuse (which you can see in abundance in the demo). I feel like you therefore placed the random viles in these fights just to make the fights reach the difficulty level you were aiming for in these specific instances, ie not be underwhelming. The problem with doing this is that these fights always just boil down to realising that viles are in play, probably dying to them, restarting, then playing just to weed out the viles from the pack - and then the fight just plays out the same as if they weren't there in the first place. The yellow key fight worked nicely because you needed to move in a considered way to deal with the threads, rather than just running around and around mindlessly. Worth noting that both the red and yellow key fights, for me, seemed to end up with harmlessly grinding down a bunch of revs, so maybe some fine tuning on the enemy composition could be good there. Overall, some annoyances, but a really good effort for a newer mapper, kudos. sco-misanb1-fda.zip

Map19 playthrough and some author notes from me. For this map i wanted to create a simple arcadey layout where you could really attack the map if you wanted to and drag many phases of enemies back into a central area; rampant Alm and Casali influence in that respect. To feed into this i wanted to have an easily accessible BFG that you can get early in the map - i have this thing where i think not enough mappers include BFGs in incidental combat maps, or at best they have hidden it in a secret or withheld until the last fight or whatever, usually to the detriment of the map. Also secret keys are cool so i wanted to include one here. I figured i could not waste too many lines on fiddly microdetailing so went down the route of bold, contrasting colours and angular geometry to try and build in an interesting look in that way instead. Ice themes are quite hard to map for (at least for me) because i think you are quite limited in terms of colours and stuff you can use if you want to try to capture a cold atmosphere - initially i thought this map was to be for the final marble episode and had a really nice blood, wood and marble theme going that really plays to the strengths of OTEX however it wasn't to be. I am pleased with how this map turned out overall especially given that it was completed in only two mapping sessions. I value replayability and so was pleased that did not get sick of playing through it when creating it, and equally revisiting it here i enjoyed picking it up and just blasting through again. Not every map works out like that. I am really super disillusioned with the mapping scene at the moment so i appreciate some of the kind comments people have made about this map.

While not specifically applicable to the OP's wad here, an alternate recommendation is joining whatever community projects look good to you as a good way to ease into things. The Doom community (in my experience) is quite a slow moving beast, so do not worry if you don't immediately receive attention for something you work on. Also remember that people commonly download and play random things they encounter without feeling the need to comment on it - and quite often people just comment to critique - so not having 18562462 replies on a thread doesn't mean people aren't checking it out. Finally, quality and attention are not necessarily proportional so don't judge yourself on that metric, it will just drive you insane if you do. If you are enjoying mapping just keep at it.

Counterattack is without any doubt in my mind the single best wad that uses stock textures.

The vast majority of textures in Scythe and Hellbound are stock Doom 2 textures... Perhaps you are running a mod that interferes with things, or somehow your iwad is messed up.

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Yeah whatever. This thread could have been "reasons why you should check out this wad" but no, there always has to be a negative slant on this forum, it is so old.

Titan Manor/Trapped on Titan Jim Flynn was one of the all time greats.

Shitty veiled "i hate thing" thread, change the record.

Autoaim. The game feels and looks straight up wrong with freelook. Modern FPS games are so far departed from Doom's style of gameplay that i can switch between old and new school with ease.

Thanks for all the complements, critique, bug reports, demos, streams, etc etc etc, all useful stuff. I am working on a second beta now that will address some common complaints and make some progressional and balance tweaks on all difficulties, so watch out for that in the coming week or so.

Experiencing Nirvana

I used to hate on Plutonia 2 for similar reasons to the OP until i kinda just accepted it for being its own thing, then i began to appreciate it more - i can see that it tries to build upon the foundations to create something new and push vanilla limits rather than just straight up rehashing what the Casalis did in the original - however, i would agree that the bad maps really horrendously miss the mark and are basically just random maps painted with Plutonia textures. Gusta's maps are the most Casali-esque in terms of mapping philosophy although my previous point about PL2 expanding upon the original still applies. The rampant invisible walls are a "speedrunner-friendly" trope of Gusta's mapping. If you explore some of the development builds of Plutonia 2 you may also appreciate what we got in the end a bit more, because it could have been much, much worse. edit - on a re-read this post seems very negative but i do very much think that PL2 is worth playing - my stance improved on subsequent playthroughs so maybe that is the case for others too!

Aw man: There are a couple of routes through the map, including the two main compulsory routes which grant you the red and yellow keys. I was trying to have the map be somewhat non linear/open ended to encourage/give the feeling of exploration. I guess i should highlight the yellow key path better (both key routes start at the beginning of the map).

Cereal Killer - probably because it never got released, but regardless i think his maps in this are crunchynut's best work. If this is ever resumed i promise to contribute more maps (that don't suck)!! Disciples of Darkness Nilla Doom Noctambulist Running Late - the sequel seems to have gotten decent attention but the original is just as good really Sparta 2

No

A fair effort for a beginner, keep making maps. I liked map04 the best as it worked to execute a concept and was pretty exciting to play. Some pointers for future mapping endeavours: - these maps mostly felt kinda cramped both in physical size and monster placement, which can be an effective tool in moderation, but left unchecked can make things feel like a bit of a clusterfuck - perhaps work on texturing a bit more, in places these maps felt a bit unfinished due to fairly monotone texturing. Breaking up massive stretches of single textures goes a long way to adding a bit of detail and making things feel more polished - Plutonia might be a good wad to study as they use relatively few textures per map but manage to retain detail and visual polish - test your maps with and without secrets to make sure you are happy with how they play in either circumstance, because not every player will find secrets (and there are a lot of powerful secrets in these maps), this is especially important with regards to secret weapons This is nonsense tbh, countless wads out there have used Plutonia textures over the years.

All the maps are done, basically. These huge maps take ages to make! :D This is cool, what technique did you use to draw out this map?

Hey Walter, i think i forgot to name my map before, please call it "Overlord", thanks :D