FrankieSmileShow

I have updated the map, and I added some difficulty level tweaks! changes: -Removed the final enemy wave outside the arena. -Moved many of those final wave enemies into the main battle proper, to spawn in after the cyberdemon activates, teleporting into the two side alcoves as you fight him. If you stay on top of this they really just add some fun gore confetti to the finale, but if you let them get out of hand, they prevent you from circle strafing freely. -Prettied up the bridge to the end of the level after the battle to draw the eye, and added a trail of health bonuses too. -Reduced the time between the different waves a tiny bit on UV and increased it a little bit on Skill 1 and 2. So you now have little bit less time to clear out the waves before the archviles start to walk into the main room. -I also replaced some of the archvile turrets with barons on skill 1 and 2, making the area denial much more forgiving, and added more pinkies on UV for the first wave. (Download is still the same link) About the wave timing changes, It turns out this is a very impactful tweak, even a few seconds extra to each wave makes a huge difference. +- 4 seconds was way too much, made Skill 1 and 2 trivial as you completely depleted the enemies, and it made UV feel impossible, but +-2 seconds per wave was perfect, just a bit of wiggle room on skills 1 and 2, and way more chaos on UV. Adds up to about 14 seconds total over the whole fight. I'm considering to add a mechanic to let the player push to the next wave faster for speedrunning? Maybe using a switch or a set of floor buttons. Not a big deal, just a thought, since a time-based set of waves like this is basically the doom version of an autoscroller, seems like a fun idea. I think I know how I would do this, I would just need to change the battle waves script to be a 1 second loop that works in steps instead of one big linear thing.

Ritual >> Download the map here << A Doom2 map01 with one big multi-phase battle, with a simple atmospheric section before and after, some custom art and two different midis. No jumping or crouching, but freelook is ok. Tested on GZDoom. Big battle is pretty difficult and chaotic. There are no difficulty level changes yet. This is my third finished map after Crimson Temple and Ternion Very happy about the complete chaos of the big fight, though the last wave might be a bit too much. I'd appreciate feedback on whether it feels frustrating or not. Also, the very start of the big fight - do you think players have time to register what is happening and find cover, should I give the player more time before the archviles attack maybe? More Screenshots:

Thanks for playing! For the mass teleport at the end, Im considering to cut it out, not very attached to it. I suppose it felt weird to have a long empty walk to the exit, but I wanted the player to still leave at the top, so I put in that ambush to fill the gap. But yeah, seeing you play, it does makes the map end in a bit of a wet fart instead of just letting that big fight be the end. I could just put a line of health bonuses instead leading to the exit or something to make it feel less empty, and remove the ambush altogether.

Tested this out on my stream! (along with another map, skip to about 30 minutes in for this map ) https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2010428620 General thoughts is, this is good, atmospheric, the balance feels right. I was running out of bullets and low on life, but it didnt feel like a balancing issue of the map, it was just forcing me to explore and fight more carefully. The vibe of the map was smooth battles and exploration, with no major fight roadblocks other than one ambush in that one room with the barrels. Feels like a Map01 of a longer map set, a tone-setter. Main issue is a lack of clear indications for important paths and buttons. The map has a lot of detail and alcoves and monster closet sections, which isnt a problem on its own, but the extra detail means theres an extra need to highlight the way forward to compensate, or it becomes harder to navigate, you can be stuck for an extra few minutes of accidentally re-visiting rooms you cleared or running around in circles looking for something you missed.

I might loosely turn some levels into an episode or megawad later, but I feel like I'm more likely to finish and release these if I just think of them as self-contained levels for now. Making a big level set feels a bit too ambitious when your grand total maps finished is 3!

Played it! Was a fun, tight puzzle box of a map. Was a bit confused at first as I adjusted to the kind of map it was, but I got there eventually! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1987389795

Played it! It was fun! Struggled quite a bit with that final battle. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1987389794

I got good news for you. I not only died in the first map, I died in the FIRST ROOM. Category 1, died on map 1, kills: 16/71 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1987389797 now thats a fiasco babyyyy (I stupidly fought the pinkies with the fist and just died miserably)

Thanks for playing everyone! @Biodegradable , Keeping the rocket launcher room for last changed the level for you quite a bit! If you do the rocket launcher room first, you have no choice but to deal with the close quarters rocket chaos in that room, but you end up in the final room with more ammo of every other type. Also, weird, I noticed the final room monsters sometimes delay spawning around the room in your run, no idea why though. I think I noticed it happening twice at least. The first time they waited nearly 10 seconds

Ternion Download the map here A Doom 2 IWAD level A short map with 3 bite-sized challenges you can do in any order before a final battle. No jumping, or youd probably skip over a few triggers. Scarce healing and ammo on UV, no boss monsters, but lots of tight spaces. All diff levels are set up, tried to make sure its fun and chaotic even at ITYTD. More screenshots: This is my second finished map after Crimson Temple back in 2015. I think this one is much better! I think of it as a map 31, each of the 3 challenges lead to a normal exit, but clearing all 3 plus the final battle leads to the secret exit to map 32. I'd appreciate feedback on the difficulty. The intention is for all 3 trial rooms to be tricky, but still reliably beatable on UV as long as you know what you are doing. The west room is probably the most chaotic right now, but I think I tweaked it down to something relatively fair. The final challenge up north has no health and only enough ammo for a few BFG blasts, so you need to have resources remaining from the 3 trials to clear it. That final room used to be more complicated, had ammo, soulsphere, megaarmor and a cyberdemon, but I cut out all of that, it felt too much like a disconnected challenge battle. I think it feels more like a conclusion to the 3 trials now that it has less stuff in it. I really struggle to beat the map without saves on UV, but I think I am probably less skilled at doom than the average Doomworlder. I can at least beat the individual rooms reliably enough on UV, only the west one still feels a bit too much like a roll of the dice. Any advice on tweaks to the map to make it feel less luck-dependant? Or is the difficulty fine? Any of the 3 trials feel too trivial? Any advice on balancing them out better?

DOWNLOAD THE MAP HERE! Hello! I made this map back in 2015! It was on an old website thats now offline, so I put it back up, and took the opportunity to fix it up and add a little polish to help get some of the rust off, preparing to make something new. Really useful to touch up something old to get yourself back in the game I think, puts you in the right mindspace and all that. Its a vanilla Doom 2 single map, hell temple style, atmospheric start leading to some bigger battles, and I probably went way overboard with secrets. Listen. I was young and naive, mad with power. You could not tell me not to have more than half the map be secret areas, I would hear none of it Difficulty is probably somewhere between Vanilla Doom 2 and Plutonia. Custom item and enemy placements for difficulty levels too. I tested it in GZDoom. Back then I tested it with Zdoom, so I presume this would also still work. You shouldn't need freelook, jumping or crouching to complete this. Its got also got two custom spooky atmosphere BGMs I made by messing around with a microphone and Audacity for a few hours. One for the main level, and one for the extra spooky blood cavern secret area. Also, a single floor texture added, I was trying out Slade... Was fun to see this old map with new eyes, and see some of what was awkward with it - Some tedious battles, too many dark areas, not enough healing pickups or ammo, and a few kinda uninteresting rooms that could use a feature or two! I think it should be quite a bit better now, though it probably still suffers from many typical "first map" pitfalls. I'll get on my second map soon.

Thanks for playing everyone, the reviews are great, and I love those videos! Watching several people play through has been really informative. Been noticing that a few secrets are not well signaled enough, for one. The difficulty seems right overall, but I'm considering changing the hidden blood cave area; I still like the general idea of a spooky area hidden next to where you begin that you only visit much later, I think I also like how confusing the layout feels and its general atmosphere, but the combat in it feels tedious after the two other big battles in the courtyard and outside. It makes for weird pacing where the levels' big moments have already come and gone, so all those monsters in the hidden cave feel like you're just mopping up. (on another note, I love the mod youre using Biodegradable, it seems like it places directional atmospheric sounds and room tones in the level? Is it based on the sector ground textures or something? I noticed there was extra wind while you were standing outside, and a machine-like whirring sound was coming from the rocket launcher room, that's really cool.)

Thanks for playing! The scrolling fire wall texture is next to the secret entrance, which is a secret wall you can open in that room. The main entrance is the more obvious big gateway you are looking at when the level begins. Also, I made the download link more obvious, sorry about that! It really was kinda lost between screenshots huh.

Howdy! Im a game developer, I normally do 2d stuff with pixel art, platformers and the like. I really like old school FPS games though, and I'd like to make a simple, old school FPS game of my own eventually. Something kind of like Blake Stone maybe, if anyone here remembers that... I got some experience with level design in general, but I got zero experience with FPS level design, so I thought making some doom maps could be a great introduction to it! I made this first map a month ago or so, and I'm pretty happy with it, though I no doubt made a lot of mistakes. Like, its probably way too big. I started making a level and never really stopped! I thought maybe I should show it off here and get some good ol constructive criticism for it all. Heres the file. The map uses the Doom 2 IWAD. Its just one level. I tested this on ZDoom. Im using the Doom 2-in-hexen-format-type source. http://www.mediafire.com/download/bdt2i557251bz67/CrimsonTemple.wad Its a little hefty because I put two MP3s in there. Some creepy atmosphere BGMs I made in Audacity. Its not entirely appropriate, its not a horror level or anything, but I always thought Doom was kind of a scary, tense game anyway, so it kinda fits either way. All in all, my first experience making a doom map was really positive! I was shocked at how easy and simple GZDoom Builder was to use, and how quickly you could get a map layout done. I had a lot of fun making little structures with sectors, like cracks on the floor and stuff, though in retrospect they're probably a little distracting in that big courtyard arena place. Also had a little taste of importing custom resources, but only used that for a single texture and two mp3s so far. I might go a little further with this next time!

The platforms used to be wider, but I shrunk em down. The wider platforms meant the arachnotrons often shot at the platform floor if they werent close enough to the edge. Ill try to find a sweet spot.

Yep, that's the alternate entrance I mentioned in that spoiler tag in my previous post! The idea is that you may or may not realize this strafe jump is possible (actually you just have to run to make it), but if you don't find it at the start, and explore the secret areas thoroughly, and go through the blood cave, you end up at the top of the cliff overlooking the starting area, from where you can see the unseen chapel. Like, the reward for going through the secret paths to the end is learning about the alternate entrance, if you didn't find it on your own at the start. After you actually see it from up there, see it gives you a shotgun and see it re-connects into the main level with a one-way secret, youre meant to make the connection that this must be reachable from the start. The route you took to the exit is more or less the "ideal" one from the alt entrance, yeah! The text prompts about the rooms dont really make sense if you enter from the alt entrance though. Not sure how I could fix that. Can you add variables to the scripts? Like some booleans to keep track of which messages were used? One thing I wanted to do with the courtyard, that im not really sure is working out like intended, is the switch that raises the four columns with arachnotrons on em. The idea was that pulling this switch makes the arachnotrons a bigger threat, but in return the columns give you useful cover from the projectile chaos in the courtyard. I'm not really sure if that works..? The arachnotrons dont seem to shoot much when theyre moved high up, and the columns can probably be more of a bother when you try to dodge cyberdemon rockets... Maybe hell knights would work better? And yeah, I must have missed a lot of door tracks. I went through em and fixed some of it, but probably missed a lot of trap doors especially. I might make another map that gives that basic "various optional branches leading to some gear to prepare you for a bigger battle you can access right from the start." idea another shot. Maybe a more obvious, straight-to-the-point approach to it. Like a corridor with teleporters on the sides, next to one-way drops that are the end of each branch the teleporters lead to. At the top of those drops, you can simply see the item(s) you'll get down that path. All cards are on the table. The branches themselves have almost no items in em: the items you see from the corridor are more or less all you get. When you reach the end of a branch and come back to that center corridor, the platform with the item lowers down, so you can get some of the items on it later if you like. There would probably be one or two branches that just lead to a lot of ammo or health pickups. Continue the center path and you reach an obvious point-of-no-return. You're put on a battle gauntlet that leads to the end. Maybe that each optional branch completed at the start adds a few more enemies to the final gauntlet? Not enough to make the branches not worth it, just enough to "customize" that final gauntlet a bit based on what you did in the early rooms.

Actually yeah, ive been trying to find a way to prevent this strategy without making this fight a complete surprise. Not sure how I would do this! I dont want to just one-way teleport the player into the courtyard, I want the player to realize what they are getting into when they go in there, as its a one-way drop, you cant go back after you start this fight. Thats pretty important here, the path being accessible from the start, the player needs to realize they should explore more and come back here later if they go there right away. So how could I keep that clarity, but still prevent players from just waking up the monsters with a few shots and backing out of the door without dropping down? I made some linedefs block out sound just now, so shooting from the doorway no longer wakes up everything in the courtyard at least, but you can still wake them up by hitting them... Should I just add a fence that blocks bullets, but still lets the player see through maybe? That seems a bit silly though. Glad you liked the secrets, rdwpa! It goes red pretty fast when you get there. On account of splattering demon gizzards all over the gaddam walls! Also, Blood Temple just sounded a bit too on-the-nose

Thanks for the comments everyone! Maybe I should re-think the three branches a little bit. Right now there is an "ideal" order to visiting them, and doing it in any other order can put you in a really bad situation. I think its okay to have the choices be uneven a little, but they might be too uneven here! Maybe I should tone down the ambush of the west path a bit, to make going there first less of a death sentence. At UV its really bad to go there without armor, like Degree23 said! Maybe switch two of those sergeants in the back to zombies, and remove an imp or two..? Id like to know where people tend to go, in what order? Do almost everyone miss the rocket launcher before either going down the courtyard or to the secret leading outside? Also, maybe I should hide that secret to go outside a bit better. It seems like most people go there first? I guess I didnt hide it super hard, for a secret thats bigger than the whole damn level. And the text prompt of the room kind of tells you there's something to look for, too. Needs a more elaborate trigger for opening the way outside maybe. Maybe you should need to complete the "real" level route first, then if you come back, the gates' open. For the "hall of three fates" where the level initially branches off, what do you guys think of how it starts out? What I *wanted* to do here was to put you in a situation where you just have your pistol and need to grab a shotgun, and pinkies are blocking your way, so you need to draw back some of the pinky demons out of the big room, past the narrow corridor and into the dark entrance lobby, use the columns there and run past em and snag a shotgun from a dead sergeant in the larger room before you can finish em off behind you. Is that more or less how it plays out for everyone in UV? Or does it just feel like a bit of a mess? I feel like it miiiight be the latter... Im adding an EXIT sign next to the end switch. You're right, thats really missing there.