SiMpLeToNiUm

16 hours ago, Kain D. said:

Can I use it in my wad? Of course, you'll be mentioned as author.

Sure! I'd be interested to see how this would slot into a WAD.

Yeah, if the ceiling isn't F_SKY1 and the way you see the sector is splitting off in triangles that aren't geometry you've actually drawn, it tells you there's a nodebuilder void there. You usually solve it by either moving some vertices around, deleting and re-making sectors, drawing lines through that sector, or building nodes later on. It could also POTENTIALLY be an unconnected vertex. Make sure "Snap to Geometry" is turned on and that vertex is actually touching the wall there.

17 hours ago, Terrcraft said:

what did he mean by this? 🤔

It's an in-joke referring to the extensive usage of the OCONC otex concrete texture (along with Warren's personal...attraction to it <3 )

I shall lay claim to an Ep. 4 slot, kindly. 

I think I liked Xaser's answer the most. After doing this for quite some time myself and working through many periods of burnout and frustration wondering similar things, the real progress I start having is when I notice how creativity interconnects with other technical and life skills. As Xaser said, the overarching knowledge of how to learn. You can only be as good as how good you are at improving upon and honing your craft, regardless of where you start. Of course talent exists, and we can go back and forth forever talking about how fair or unfair that is, but the real important bit that matters is how and what you choose to do to get better, regardless of your talent.

Learning from mistakes and keeping a focus on what it is you're actually trying to do. Paying attention to patterns in your processes. What pitfalls you routinely run into. Thought-traps, personal hangups, getting your actual personal life in order. Getting your ego out of the way and trying to look at creativity in a broader sense. There's a lot of romantic ideas floating around about what the process is, but I usually think of it myself as pure, raw focus. Keeping a clean head. People overlook how pivotal that is to having greater potential creative output. There's just SO many factors, but focus, having your mind right and having a trial-and-error, resilient mindset and a willingness to take each step along the way as a learning opportunity is what separates the work of those you envy and those who make nothing or always seem to wind up frustrated and defeated. Creativity isn't a singular goalpost, and the talented don't always stay ahead of the pack forever. Sure, the greatest of the great will, but is that really the conversation we wanna be having when talking about something that should be fun? If we wanna just sit back and mope that people are better than us, that's hardly a conversation about "talent" anymore.

Some people start ahead, but as the adage goes, hard work beats out talent when talent gets lazy (no I'm not saying you need to devote your life to Doom mapping or you'll be a failure, please, God), and hard work is so much more than just what you think you're capable of doing in the editor on any particular rainy or sunshiny day.

A bit of feedback myself, aside from all the gushing and praise I wanna lump upon this mapset:

This area in the Egypt map, for flow and QoL I think there should be some stairs that rise up from the sand in this corner once you complete the encounter here (maybe a switch on the wall next to the diabolist or a trigger once you go that way the first time) since you have to constantly loop around if you're going back through this area again:

These bars in the Royal Chapel just outside of the big Cathedral fight can softlock you if you come back through this area and re-trigger them. I'm not sure exactly how this happens:

Nodebuilder void in The Eye of the Cosmos:

Also in the same map, I feel like the lifts should be easier to spot. Earlier on in the map I had 0 idea these were lift textures. Something like lights or something earlier on could make this easier to notice. I think it was only towards the end of the map I watched a lift raise or lower and only then went back through the map noticing the other ones. Maybe something with brightmaps or lights on it?

Godless Night by Tango, et. al:

A big part of me really doubts it's something that's "never been discussed here" before. It's likely that when it was/is discussed, such threads meet a similar fate, and probably for very good reason. It doesn't take a master detective to figure out why. It's just a bad idea to go drama-stoking, no matter how burning your curiosity is.

That's all a thread like that can do: stoke old drama for no reason.

On 10/15/2023 at 6:17 PM, RonnieJamesDiner said:

After 55 some-odd maps, I still actually have no idea how to describe my design process. It's like a weird blur of getting one idea that morphs into another, and then another, and then at some point I'll get a sudden, random sense of the full layout, and eventually push myself across the finish line because I feel like I've come too far to give up. I bounce back and forth like a pinball between layout work, detailing, combat, aligning textures, picking skies, finding midis, and endlessly playtesting, probably based on nothing more than losing interest in one thing, so I switch to another. 

 

I really wish I had something more articulate and enlightening to say, especially considering how much I seem to wax poetically in my WAD reviews, but it's always been this strange enigma. I'm guessing that's why it's so easy to find pages of tutorials on the technical end of mapping, and much harder to find detailed explanations on the theoretical side. 

Flow. State.

I think we should clarify "aesthetics." If that means overall fidelity of the environments, i.e. detail or complexity, then that matters a bit less to me than say, artistic expression of a concept or the more classical definition of "aesthetics."

If you have a chosen theme or design philosophy and I see it in your work or can guess at it because of how well you've expressed that idea, that is much more enthralling and interesting to me than the overall detail level, or fidelity, although grand or opulent maps do have a wow factor to them that is hard to ignore.

Say for instance the aesthetic you're going for is brutalism, and you do a very good job of capturing that very specific idea through how you've crafted your experience, regardless of the overall fidelity. Or, say gameplay or storytelling is your primary focus and you nail it with some passable visuals. I'm going to be much more impressed by every other aspect of the work rather than just how it looks.

Overall, great looking maps are just a bonus for me, but they do have unignorable staying power.

Damn these look great! Gonna have to give this one a go!

Welcome to Heck.

Nice to see some purely aesthetic-driven walkable maps coming out, very nicely done, and I like the way you did the exit.

On 3/7/2023 at 8:55 AM, Sectorslayer said:

Layout and combat complete. Now adding a bit more detail here and there and balancing the skills...

this looks sick, dude. some of my personal favorite vanilla textures in there, and I love the shapes and compact look

23 hours ago, OceanMadman said:

Credits: I used a custom sky by @SiMpLeToNiUm

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For the record, that sky is actually @muumi's

I have an external CD player that I can plug into different devices. No more integrated CD drive on my PC.

23 hours ago, lupinx-Kassman said:

Sneaking into GauzyStop with the help of a new machine

 

You are 110% on to something with this art style. I love it. Reminds me of an abstract 90s/2000s cartoon that was never made. Keep it up!

Doom Doodle

The state of my initial submission to Jimmy's Isolation is a skeleton in the closet, but I have since refurbished it; although I actually intend to refurbish said refurbishment. That map suffered from a lot of glaring issues, but the one that actually affected the design and play of the map itself was progression points, signaling, connecting, etc. and making these elements more palatable to the player. Sensible progression is something I generally struggle to achieve in most of my works. That and the idea that each map has to be its own "complete" experience, with a satisfying ramp up that culminates in a Big Fight(tm). That was a good thing we addressed in a recent-ish chat in the ye olde Heckenforgen. 

Overall I wish I put more effort into crafting experiences that satisfy me instead of worrying about external factors or obsessing about perfection, whether that be the perfect fight, a flawless and genius layout, etc. 

I'm better at than I ever was, but still improving with each release (when I manage one, that is ;p ).

Elend!! Good to see you again buddy! Holy. crap. I had seen a few screenies of this behemoth before but I don't think I quite got the picture of just how huge and gorgeous it had become! Whatever you choose to do with it, I'm just happy we got to see the results of what you had put into it! I too upvote the idea for a walking sim map (as I have a clear bias for them). It's detailed enough to be concept pieces for a real facility's architecture portfolio if you ask me ;p Would be sick just to take a stroll through these areas.

1 hour ago, muumi said:

Author: Muumi
Name: Shivering Garden

Damn dude that looks GREAT