rdwpa

seed, the main reason people who try to improve don't improve at games is being unaware of 'what really matters' in the context of getting better. Doom isn't about 'aiming' and 'dodging' and 'reflexes' in the most generic sense. Tactics and strategy -- how you approach things -- matters a lot more. A simple, pure example is how, when fighting a mostly unidirectional mass of straight-line firing monsters such as imps or hell knights at moderate range, a lot of players will do crazy circles and zigzags all over the place trying to dodge stuff, and disperse a mess of projectiles everywhere, making their life tough and inevitably tanking a bunch of damage... ...whereas if you are more knowledgeable about that setup you will understand the principle of 'bullet herding' and essentially just minimize direction changes over the length of the encounter by way of controlled movement: you might stand at the furthest point to one side you can, and slowly creep towards the other side, and then as you approach the endpoint of that side, move rapidly towards it to create a pocket of space where no projectiles are headed, allowing you to change direction safely and repeat. All projectiles will loft by you harmlessly because those monsters fire at where you are, not where you will be. (Your proper movement speed will depend on the distance of the monsters, the speed of their projectiles, and how the monsters are oriented, etc. -- knowing that too is a key part of knowing the approach.) Basic example, covered in Slaughtermaps 101, and you might already know it -- but it illustrates well how 'approach' matters. So many encounters in Doom are governed by approaches and principles that if known, make everything easier. Not just specific encounters, of course, but also generic-type encounters that recur in many variations, and stuff so simple you might not call it an 'encounter'. Some need to be puzzled out for particular encounters; some apply to many. Everyone knows some approach-stuff (e.g. 'left-right-left while dodging mancs'), but the hole goes really deep and stuff can be pretty nuanced. Show a map that you struggled with and I guarantee you're making lots of mistakes along those lines, rather than simply not aiming/dodging well. A lot of approach stuff is also invisible to the observer because it is attentional (what you focus on 'in your head'), but can make a huge difference in reliability. There is 'meta' approach stuff too, namely how to devise strategies and routes in a practical, time-efficient way. There is the importance of practicing efficiently. There is the importance of understanding what doesn't matter for the success of a run, thus what you shouldn't divert your attention or energy into doing well. The existence of all of those is why watching demos won't teach many important things. Do it. Ask questions.

Bob9001

Sort of. The maximum of the splash damage component is 70 -- the vile attack does a base damage of 20. In practice, a vile won't do the full 90 damage because the attack tends to be not perfectly centered on its target. Running is likely to shave off a few percentage points of damage from the practical maximum (89% is the most I've ever seen), and get you down to that 83% figure. Archvile splash, like other forms of splash damage, calculates if the epicenter has line-of-sight of you before registering damage. So the easiest way to take partial damage, which will be the base damage of 20, is to push yourself up against a ledge between you and the vile: example.

I avoid prescribing weapon-monster pairings because everything is situational. E.g. RL vs. pain elementals might 'look' risky but it could very well be the best option in a particular setting if RL DPS dwarfs available options and you need to kill bunches of them fast. Someone who uses SSG on a single zombie instead of switching to a pistol (heh) might 'look' like they are wasting ammo, but the map has a comfortable excess, then no reason not to. Harder maps will constrain your options and force you to do 'counter-intuitive' things more often. And in easier maps that allow you more freedom, there often won't be much of a difference between the effectiveness of different options anyway. Or you might still be constrained by macroscopic factors (e.g. 'wasting' shells on something because you have lots of those but fewer bullets) rather than the specifics of whatever you are fighting at the moment. A few BFG tips in response to common 'mistakes', since it's the most nuanced weapon to use well: - Circle-strafing naively (while always facing the horde) indeed can be wasteful, but a modified approach is often very effective -- to fire the ball itself, you should momentarily flick your view at the proper angle (somewhere opposite the direction you're running), so that the direction of tracers ends up properly centered at the crowd. - Understand how much BFG ammo you are allowed to waste in a given map. The natural tendency is to hoard or at least use cells reasonably, but if you're playing a BFG spam map, such conservationism, which can be 'natural' for most people, will often bite you. Holding down M1 for an entire fight vs. momentarily stopping can often be the difference between a fight being easy and pretty tough. - Don't stop moving in the middle of a frantic firefight waiting for your ball to impact a distant wall to kill that vile or whatever. Just write that one off as a loss and fire another shot. The BFG emits a cone emanated from the player in the direction the ball was fired. It doesn't matter where you are looking -- you can even fire tracers from your butt if you shoot in one direction and then turn around 180 degrees. Yes, when speaking of a single target, since more tracers will hit that target. When dealing with a larger number of monsters (low- and mid-tiers), you often want to hang back just far enough for the tracers to hit enough of the targets, with how far depending on the number.

Nice. That city map screenshot is unexpected and looks pretty good. I do hope there is a sector-detail car.

Stardate 20x7 map02 has something like that.

Depends. In max runs, for good times or otherwise 'performance'-minded, I favor consistency; uncontrollable variability in map and monster behavior tends to be a detriment. Short or mid-length maps are favored to grand epics. Straightforward, linear, all become pluses. Tight and tidy is preferable to baggy and loose. Also give me skill tests. I'll repeat a map a bunch if it lets me practice something I enjoy doing. In purely casual play, intuitively, multiple routes or ways to play. Doesn't have to be 'non-linear', as long as my options (e.g. running past stuff and setting multiple groups into one frenzy) allow me to enforce that. Some amount of content being optional is a plus for longer maps. Off-kilter stuff that people do less frequently: multiple exits in one map (outside of traditional regular-secret couplets), vastly different HNTR/HMP/UV, mechanics that work differently, pistol start choice 'class systems', and so on [there's so much more cool stuff that people don't do, will give ideas in exchange for maps :)]. When I use maps as tools for practice (multiple save slots, drill fights), I like good fights that I can practice essentially on loop (duh). But stuff like that is obvious. Perhaps less obvious: I'll play a map on loop if: midi, visuals, atmosphere, basic movement (am I bumping into stuff awkwardly and constantly stopping to wait for lifts or whatever, or can I just SR40 through big chunks while in a flow state; are there fun jumps and platforming parts :O), are all up there. There are random maps I load up in -nomonsters just to run through. (Also everything in each can belong to the other. lol as if there would be such an easy dichotomy. :D)

Would suggest encouraging brevity and openness but not necessarily the arena format. Valiant map07 comes to mind: could hardly be called an 'arena', but the main playspace is open and compact enough for the similarity to the original to register. Limiting oneself to three general themes, with two of those being cogs in the fairly old hat 'techbase -> hell' progression, is uninspired, and fails to use otex to its potential. otex can support at least five chapters, and more imaginative ones. Worth emphasizing in bold. Even half manc/tron maps over 32 maps would grow old fast. Encourage a wider selection of 'home monster' pairs, and you might be able to get more mileage out of the concept. Additionally, there is a lot to be said for cutting the intended size of the set in half as a an alternative way of addressing those issues. Not everything needs to be a full megawad.

The custom assets are interesting. The pairing of monster placement and layout design is a weak point. map01 is a tangle of narrow caves with no navigational cues. Everything looks identical and you are mostly shotgunning stuff in front of you. map02 suffers from 'meat in corridors syndrome': groups of HKs and barons at doorways are common, and at one point you have to SSG a few dozen spectres in a long narrow hallway.

Cool little map. Pretty low runtime indeed, but every area has a few interesting things about it. Favorite part was the Biggest area of improvement would be visual concourse in the techbase areas -- there are plenty of vertical misalignments and rough texture transitions (album of notable examples). It also seemed weird that the rocky area immediately below the volcano was made of straight lines rather than typical natural contours.

No need to quote that entire wordbomb :) I'd suggest playing good maps and looking at stuff. Simpler forms of alignment is something you'll probably figure out quickly.

Welcome. Neat lighting effect -- the door is glowing. However, beyond this and another area I'll get to later, the map is pretty much uniformly lit. Usually not ideal. I like how the chaingun is teased as an objective. Choice of which of three branching paths to explore is up to the player, all fine and dandy; I happened to go here first out of chance. Two things in this shot: blue carpet doesn't make a lot of sense as a flat for the silver footstep, and the room height is such that the computer panels are sunk into the floor. Alignment of the 64-wide gray panels is a bit 'free' at times, e.g. here and here. Easiest to choose wall segment lengths in increments of 64. - Observation: all rooms so far, and many in the map, are rectangular and entirely flat, which is commonly presented as a 'no-no' in mapping dogma. I'd say that a more accurate way of putting it is that the rooms could use more interesting visual or structural ideas -- an absence of those often manifests in flat, entirely boxy rooms. A similar thing can be seen in the transitions from room to room, which are mostly common doors. At your disposal are also: drops, stairs, lifts, visual-only transitions (e.g. windows), open physical transitions (well, openings), list goes on. Lower unpeg sides of walls if you want them to stay put when the ceiling rises. The area map means the remaining secrets are free in this map, since it is a small map and all secrets are either pushwalls or hidden backways. And speaking of lifts and windows. :) Alignments of the window (window itself, and sides) can be adjusted. Use of this door texture calls for a lower ceiling. On the subject of doors -- ll -- it's common to inset them into the treshhold as such -- [ll] -- rather than situate them parallel to the adjoining wall. I also noticed a common technique of flat borders at doorways between texture changes. Works here, although not everywhere. Up the last remaining path, we get our first ambush: shotgunners on one side, imps on another. Mark these spectres ambush/deaf (exact thing the flat is called depends on editor) if you don't want firing a shot to lure them all to the doorway. Probably a good idea since they lose their surprise value this way. I like this asset combo. Alignments are pretty loose but okay. The closet traps are a good idea: I like how they can cascade. RL and PR secrets are both useful from the perspective of maxing the map. Using 'obvious' monster-blocking lines in the playspace is often discouraged (they are mostly a 'janitorial' tool) but this is a good case of where they work: they make visual sense instead of being arbitrarily placed. I like how that baron is sort of the 'overseer' of that back area. At this point it's obvious that the texture transitions and alignment is rather loose by intent. In this case, some of it works, some of it looks like mistakes regardless: most notably the silver strip of the caco closet doors being visible (you can use a ceiling raise effect to move it all the way to the top). The asset and color combo is fun though. It also strikes me that the map has two separate modes: one is the quasi-realism of the more conventionally shaped areas, another the more 'oldschool', iwad-like style of these recently covered areas. There's no clear demarcation of techniques used in either -- misalignments are present in both, for example. That leads to them undercutting each other; when I got to these areas it was harder to separate 'sloppy design' and 'tastefully loose'. Lighting! Anyway, hope this helps. Keep making maps.

-longtics doesn't work while recording demos in the Boom and MBF formats for unclear reasons. It does work in the vanilla formats, as well as complevel -1 which has it on by default. You were competent all along, just needed the placebo to believe it.

To de-stress. Map 10 UV-Max in 4:55 aa10-455.zip Map 15 UV-Max in 4:23 aa15-423.zip

Keep it up!