Jan

This aligns with my vision as well. Things I value in a level are clean lines, interesting shapes, height variations, good proportions, deliberate contrasts to draw attention to things, interesting texture combinations, good lighting choices,... Not every object has to be fringed to the N-th degree to be interesting, and more often than not I find that superfluous detail detracts from a level rather than it adds. I think in the end for me it's more about attention to detail than about the granularity of the vertices and sectors.

Feels like I'm using "Accessibility mode" in Windows or something, with the huge fonts and all the wasted space.

Seems /idgames links are broken since the update. Something like https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/m-o/nos4dead doesn't work anymore, which is a pain as many wads are linked to via an idgames link.

Yes, I'm currently working on some stuff more in line with the E2 style, and with some early alpha influences as well. Working title is Forsaken Shores. Thing is though, with my time constraints and knowing how quickly inspiration can come and dry up again, I think we're looking at 2 years or more before I have a full episode worth of levels. So I was playing with the idea of taking a different approach: release the levels one by one, as they get made, like I did with the original classic levels. Then later, when they are finished, I combine them into a full episode. The upside is that you'll get to play stuff sooner. The downside is that the first time you play it, it won't be the finished product in episodic format yet. Any thoughts on that?

That's just a word I made up :) The level name is an anagram, so I had to make it fit.

Your theory doesn't hold water in my case. E1 was always my favorite, even when Doom came out. I actually remember being somewhat disappointed by the following episodes. I perceived it as a drop in quality and felt that, despite the new goodies and new monsters, the later levels were less polished and all over the place thematically. Maybe not the most complex, but they're definitely the most polished ones. Stylistically, there's also a very strong sense of cohesion that is not present in any of the other IWAD levels.

STARX textured rooms don't look right at 128 height IMO, amd it's almost never done that way in E1. It's usually used in 200, 144 and 72 units high rooms, or multiples thereof. 128 high rooms are rare in general in E1. STARGR1 specifically is also rarely used in E1. It's too clean and shiny to use in abundance, that's why Romero generally used the murkier STARGx or STARTANx variants. Anyway I thought in this case a more "earthy" feeling texture would create a pleasing contrast that makes the stairway stand out from the rest of the room. Also, the walls of the stair case are 45 units thick, which means that it's impossible to align a STARX texture to the ends of it. The way it was just looked ridiculous. So I thought it'd be better to use a texture that is less sensitive to x-axis alignment.

I think the main problem with the exit room is that the sharp angles look "off", and that the room feels cramped because of it. These angles: It's especially strange that you've chosen this "cramped" configuration because there are no surrounding sectors that would block an expansion of the room. I've taken the liberty to do some quick sector surgery and changed it to this: This looks much better in game IMO Before: After: If you want to use some of these changes, feel free. I uploaded the modified E1M2 to my dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4d9uwppdoli64i3/phobe1m2.wad?dl=0

Well with that STARG texture, I can see why you'd want to keep the room at 72 units height, but there are solutions for the door trim texture. For example, you could make a little portal sector in front of the door that is a 8 units higher and it would look much better already. Here's an example of how I did something like that in No Sleep for the Dead:

I played up until E1M5. It's been pretty easy sailing, but fun. Things I've noticed so far: * There's a bit too much repetition in your theme. For example, I think almost every level so far had at least two COMPTALL computer mazes. * After a few levels it's starting to feel a bit same-y and random corridor-y. The original E1 levels usually revolved around one or more central pieces of architecture (so called landmarks), which gave you an idea of the 3D space of the level, but I don't get that feeling here. * Noticed some (too much) misaligned ceiling lights. I'd either align those sectors to the grid, or not use those light textures ... Same goes for that UAC logo floor texture btw, align it to a 64x64 grid or use FLAT14 or something instead. * Noticed a lot of cut off keycard markings. Always make sure the floor-to-ceiling height is a multiple of 16 if you use those. * Red keydoor exit on E1M5 can be opened without the red key * On one of the earlier levels, there was a nukage corridor leading to a secret and it had -20% hurtfloor, with no rad suit in sight. It nearly killed me and all I got for my trouble was a lame blursphere. I think -20% floors should be reserved for lava and inescapable pits. * On E1M4, there was an intricate secret with a timed lift and a well hidden switch that again lead to just a blursphere. I figured the secret out, but decided not to bother with doing the annoying race-for-the-lift thing for only a blursphere.

You know you could just use linked sectors instead of sound tunnels...

I disagree somewhat. Pecking away with the pistol at anything higher than shotgun sargeants is annoying, so you have to be careful with that because nobody likes to do that for too long. I prefer to give the player a little something at the starting room, or at least nearby enough so that they can make a run for it and don't have to go "peck-peck-peck" for too long. To keep the player on his toes, I prefer to hand out only just enough ammo at the beginning, so he has to make all his shots count. Alternatively, I sometimes provide the player with strategically placed barrels or obvious infight opportunities as alternative ways of disposing with the first wave of enemies. Edit: just realized I replied to a 5 year old comment :p

I liked this one a lot better than E1M8B, but I still prefer the broad clean strokes of the original E1 episode levels. I couldn't help but feel that there was sometimes a bit too much going on visually, and spatially, the dimensions and proportions felt a bit "off" too.

Yes, or his take on map15 Industrial Zone! /s

Yeah that's the sound tunnel thingie.

I'm confused, isn't that exactly what I said?

The artwork doesn't really do it for me either (generic, as you said), but it's the closest thing that I know of.

Keep an eye on Strafe? http://www.strafe1996.com/

Quite often a project like this is just one guy coming up with a vague idea saying: "plz make this for me". It doesn't work that way. Ideally a community project should be about like minded people coming together, sharing ideas and inspiring each other. And even then it's hard as balls to stay motivated and to keep moving forward towards the end goal.

The short development cycle perhaps? Remember, Doom went from basically scratch to release in less than a year. Later Doom engine games like Heretic and Hexen did have look up and down, although I'm not sure if they had *mouse*look.

I actually use that a lot, it allows me to do some quick maneuvering that I couldn't do with the keyboard. Ports that don't have forward/backward mouse movement always throw me off. (D64ex comes to mind)

Made me chuckle

Antagonistic is a great choice of word. I feel that way too about Plutonia. It's not too hard in the sense that I couldn't beat it or that I'd have to select a lower skill level. No, it's hard and often frustrating in a sense that it's no longer enjoyable to play. It's full of blatant "fuck you player" moments (things like putting a chaingunner right behind the player at the start of a map) that it makes me just not want to play anymore.

I believe the P50/P60/P66 came out first, then the P90 and P100 and only later the P75,P120 and P133. My Pentium 100 was the first PC that I could play Doom on by the way, and the first PC that I bought with my own money, so I still have a good memory of all the specs back in the day :)

In some aspects they still are, especially for (retro) gaming. - LCD's have more latency, they generally support lower refresh rates (60Hz is the "standard", whereas CRTs commonly supported 85Hz or 100Hz) - They still suffer from ghosting. - Viewing angles are poorer, especially on more gaming oriented TN screens. IPS has better viewing angles, but has more ghosting, latency etc. - Upscaling lower resolutions to the native LCD resolution is still problematic because it produces artifacts and oddly sized pixels if the native resolution is not an exact multiple of the original resolution. For example, if I play vanilla Doom (320x200) in Dosbox on my 1920x1200 screen, there are some oddly sized pixels in the status bar. - They are almost exlusively 16:9 format nowadays which is only really good for watching movies and playing recent games. For desktop work or reading webpages having more height is more useful than having more width, so something like 16:10 or even 5:4 or 4:3 would be much better. 4k screens and freesync/gsync are starting to mitigate some of these issues, but they are not common yet. Of course, the upside is that we have much higher resolutions and much bigger screens now that don't take up an entire desk and don't weigh 100kg. LCD screens also don't flicker and we never have to use various knobs and dials again to try and get a non-trapezoid properly aligned image on the center of the screen. I do miss the degauss button though :p