Alfwin

Not at all bad for a first map, although there's certainly room for improvement. I like the strong hellish aesthetic.

I use Krita for all my image editing. Its "wraparound mode" feature is ideal for making seamlessly-tiling textures, plus it's just a good image-editing tool all around. Ooh, that's not a bad brick texture. Simple, but there's enough detail to keep it visually interesting. I like it. That said, I do notice that it's 100x100 pixels, whereas DOOM textures tend to be in multiples of 8 (128x128 or 64x64 being the most common sizes). I don't know if deviating from that convention would cause any actual problems, but just be aware that it is a deviation from convention.

@LVENdead Yeah, the ammo in this one was pretty hard to balance. I wanted it to be scarce enough that the player had to manage it carefully, and to make you push deeper into unsafe territory in search of more. It might be a little too stingy with ammo for some people's tastes, but I know that it is possible - with a bit of luck with Archie's resurrections - to get 100% kills on UV without the chainsaw. In terms of the layout and arena design, this is the map I'm most pleased with so far. Highly-interconnected levels with lots of different paths through the space are some of my favourites to play, and designing one was a lot of fun, too. I'm not surprised it reminded you of E2M7; just before I started mapping, I played through a couple of IWAD maps that I knew had a similar flow to what I wanted to create, to try to get some clearer inspiration, and E2M7 was one of the ones I played. The Cyberdemon was always meant to be a quick puzzle, not an actual "fight." Wearing down its 4000 hit points is never the most interesting part of a cyberdemon encounter, and as you say, suddenly giving the player a ton of ammo and weapons to fight him would be too big a shift from the feel of the rest of the map. When making the level, I was also thinking of the archie near the exit as the "boss." To be honest, I'm not sure what my mapping process is. I've just been "in the zone" when it comes to DOOM mapping lately. I do try to hold myself to a decent standard, at least. I won't work on a map if I don't really have any good ideas for it - that's why Incursion MAP03 hasn't yet seen the light of day - and I try to remain conscious of what purpose everything I add to a map serves, both in terms of gameplay and visuals. Other than that, I really just take an initial concept and see where it takes me.

(I tried to post this hours ago but Doomworld was being difficult) @Biodegradable Always great to hear your commentary, mate. Those opening 10 seconds got a laugh from me; I'm glad you've been enjoying my maps so far. This map was supposed to be tough, but that looked like it was just a bit tougher than I intended. I guess because when I was testing it, I knew where all the sound-blocking linedefs are so I knew how far I could push into the map without waking more monsters up. Sometimes I do have trouble telling whether you're genuinely annoyed by a map, or just being challenged while still having fun with it, so there were more than a few encounters there where I thought, "do I need to tone this down?" But I don't think I do; that's what the other difficulty settings are for. You made to choice to play on "hard" mode, so that's what you get. :D @ElPadrecitoCholo Thanks for the feedback! The scarcity of ammo on this map was a deliberate choice; I wanted to force the player to continually push deeper into unsafe/unexplored territory in search of ammo pickups. Same goes for the confined spaces, which were intended to pressure the player, although I do agree that at least a couple areas could've been made slightly more open, for example, the upper level of the library. @Clippy heheh, your frustration on realizing you could've had the SSG almost from the start of the map... consider that my payback for when that happened to me in your Feel the Burn WAD! I'm actually kind of glad you missed it; it's good to have confirmation that it's possible to get 100% kills on UV, without the SSG or chainsaw, and a bunch of ammo wasted on the cyberdemon. Shame you locked yourself out of the chainsaw secret at the end by using the last few bullets on that mancubus, but oh well. You saw the chainsaw, and you saw (and figured out how to access) the switch to open it, even if you forgot about the latter and didn't make the connection, so I'll consider that a successful UV Max run. Well done! And yeah, that music track is rather quiet. I added it fairly early on, when all I really knew about the map was that it was a maze-like library of demon lore, and I wanted the music to feel "mysterious". I think it still fills that role, but now that the map's finished, I wonder if Sinister or The Demons from Adrian's Pen might've better fit the pace of the gameplay. But well... I know it's silly, but I felt kind of bad for They're Going to Get You. That track doesn't seem to get a lot of recognition.

I try to stick to a very specific pattern with damaging liquids, across all my maps, for the sake of consistency. - Water and brown slime are never damaging - Nukage does 2%-5% damage - Blood does 5%-10% - Lava does 10%-20%. If another flat is used for a damaging sector, I'll try to make it as clear as possible from the environmental design that it's a hazard (Like the use of Flat22 as a damaging sector that looks like some sort of power conduit in Containment Area).

Although I'm fairly new to serious WAD-making, I have absolutely felt the same way, both with regards to making Doom levels and in other creative pursuits. It's a dangerous mindset to get stuck in - it's ironic that the fear of not being creative enough can so easily stifle one's creativity. There's nothing wrong with your work being inspired by or based on something else - nihil novi sub sole, after all, and as much as people talk big about originality in works of art (yes, making Doom levels is art), the true thing of value is iteration: building on existing works. You needn't come up with entirely new ideas to be creative - that's too much to reasonably ask of anyone, I think. All any artist does is combine bits and pieces of old ideas in new ways. Heck, I just made what is quite possibly my most derivative WAD to date. It borrows heavily from several DOOM 1 IWAD maps. E1M2's computer maze, E2M3's StarX room, and E2M7's general flow all are present in spirit in my map. Yet, it's also the map I'm most proud of so far. The more you borrow ideas from other maps, the more you'll understand those ideas, and the more you'll be able to do new and interesting things with those ideas. So don't be afraid of making something that's inspired by someone else's work, because that's simply how creativity works. As long as you aren't copying entire maps wholesale, you're good. Don't try to make something 100% original; try to make something inspired by 2 or 3 existing works, and the rest will fall into place.

Man, that Arch-Vile library gave me a hard time! Felt almost a little unfair when the demons gained control of the doorway; the Archies kept resurrecting meat-shields like the Hell Knights so I kept draining my ammo & health without being able to engage the Archies directly. Other than that, I enjoyed it. The main outdoor arena was fun and visually interesting; you've made good use of the stock DOOM II textures once again. Honestly, this looks like it could be a DOOM II IWAD map if not for the fact that it probably wouldn't fit in vanilla limits. The ending did feel a little anticlimactic though because by the time I got the yellow key I'd already cleared out the arena. A final ambush at either the yellow or blue key wouldn't go amiss, I think. Teleport in some Revenants or something, idk. Oh, and since you mentioned you don't know how to change the music: For that, I like to use the WAD editor SLADE. Just import whatever MIDI file you want to play into the WAD, and rename it to the name of the track that plays on the map you're replacing (so, if your map is MAP01, you'd rename the MIDI to D_RUNNIN).

Playing through the entire DOOM franchise on my channel (that's the plan, anyway). I'm onto the Shores of Hell now.

I'm a bit of a purist, and I really don't like to play DOOM with freelook, but I'm not about to tell other people that they're wrong for liking freelook. You're only playing the game "wrong" if you're playing it in a way that isn't fun to you, whatever anyone may try to tell you.

I've published two (serious) WADs so far. Incursion is a WIP 4-map WAD (maps 1 and 2 are finished, map 3 coming soon!), Dumping Ground is a very small standalone map that I made in a couple of afternoons. Both are vanilla-compatible using stock DOOM II assets.

This. This is the worst map I can create. It's got inescapable death pits, it's got punching pain elementals with no Berserk, it's got misaligned STARTAN and FIREBLU, it's got a bullshit unmarked teleport "puzzle," it's got inconsistent damaging floors... everything about this map is engineered to make you crave oblivion, and I dare you to UV-Max this abomination. Worst.7z

@LVENdead The skybox was a lot of fun to make (I cobbled it together out of fragments of images I found by searching the word "industrial") so I'm glad you like it. Earlier versions had a much more vibrant orange sky, but it made the rest of the level look too dark by contrast. Dusk was a definite influence on this. Trying to make a "realistic" (or at least recognizable) setting with the stock Doom 2 textures was pretty fun. That's part of the reason I like making very vanilla maps; it forces me to be more creative. Did you find the RL secret in the old or the new version? The old one was far enough away that, depending on your audio settings, you almost couldn't hear it even without any distractions; the new one should be much more audible (although hopefully not too obvious).

Ok, I've decided to move the rocket launcher secret. It was far too easy to miss. Now, hopefully, it should be reasonable to find if you're paying attention. (To anyone who did find it in the previous version: you still open it the same way as before).

@Azuris It's good to see HMP playthroughs; justifies the time I spent setting up the different difficulties. Hm, so far I've not seen anyone find either of the secrets. Makes me wonder if they're too well hidden. You got a bit closer to finding the rocket launcher than @Clippy did, though.

@Clippy "breather map" is pretty much exactly what I was going for - both for the player and for me as the level designer. The "classic" feel you mentioned was probably intentional, if only subconsciously. When I was making that first room, I did think, "this is turning out a bit Slough of Despair" at one point. Hopefully less annoying, though. Taking out that revenant with a barrel-punch was epic. Almost enough to make up for the pain I felt watching you, on both attempts, walk within millimetres of a secret but not get quite close enough to see it, lol.

@Biodegradable Yeah like I said, I specifically wanted to make a short map. I probably won't make any significant expansion to this level itself; I'm mostly happy with it as is, but I quite enjoyed working with this visual style so there's a good chance I'll do an entirely new junkyard-themed level at some point in the future.

I recorded my playthrough of Deep Keep. Don't know why the first few seconds of the video didn't record properly, but all the actual gameplay footage is there. I really like this map. Visually, it's quite striking, with the big imposing keep looming in front of you at the start. It has a good flow, and I like the gradual ascent of the keep. Good stuff.

Hello, (Doom)world! I've been lurking around this forum for a few months now, but this is my first time posting. I thought I'd make my first appearance in style with this, my first-ever published WAD: Incursion. Incursion_v0.21a.7z Update: MAP02: Perpetual Strife has been added! Continue the incursion in this new map with a hectic battle in a map that barely fits into vanilla Doom! Seriously, getting this thing to be vanilla-compatible was a pain in the butt, and it still doesn't run great in DOSBox. Works fine with Chocolate Doom, or any advanced sourceport. Thematically, it's a bit different than the first map. Since this is my first published WAD, I want to experiment with different types of levels. Like with MAP01, I'll be making adjustments to this based on community feedback, but work on MAP03 won't begin for a little while yet. I don't want to get burnt out on this project. What is this? This isn't the first level I've made for Doom. This is the first level I've finished, and feel is good enough to share with the world. Incursion.wad currently includes two vanilla-style maps for Doom II, but my plan is to make it a series of 4 maps. Alongside incursion.wad the following are included: a dehacked file, for Chocolate Doom users, which simply changes the name of the level displayed on the map screen. an EXE file pre-patched with the dehacked file, for vanilla/DOSBox users. a README file, containing information about the wad (more or less the same as what's written here). a changelog file, containing exactly what it sounds like. Screenshots - MAP01: Wretched Outpost Screenshots - MAP02: Perpetual Strife Compatibility Requires the DOOM II iwad. Primarily tested with Chocolate Doom, and designed with this source port in mind. Also tested with Crispy Doom, GZDoom and Vanilla (through DOSBox). Vertical mouselook, jumping, &c. are not supported and may lead to sequence breaking! Difficulty Incursion is designed to be interesting - but not punishing - to players who are able to comfortably beat Doom II on Ultra-Violence. All difficulty settings are supported except Nightmare (which I've not tested. Feel free to try it!), and I've assumed Hurt Me Plenty to be the "default" setting. Estimated playtime is 15 to 20 minutes for MAP01, and about the same for MAP02. Story After several failed invasions, you'd think Hell would be ready to give up at last. But word has reached you that your old foes are back at it again, and this time they mean business! Several of the constantly-warring factions of Hell have joined together under the command of the seven most vile, malicious lord of the underworld: the Council of Depravity. Fearing the damage such a force could inflict, your Night Sentinel buddies decide the best plan is to strike first and fight the demons on their own turf. But the Council of Depravity has cast a spell that prevents all those with goodness in their hearts from entering their domain. Fortunately, at the edge of their evil holdings lies an old UAC base, a casualty of Hell's first invasion of Earth years ago, and it just so happens you've enough compatible tech in your old UAC-issued combat gear to slip into the base through a disused teleporter, bypassing the Council's spell. You'll be on your own, but hey, it's not like this is your first party in the realm of the damned. Your mission is simple: Fight your way through the demons and kick the Council of Depravity's ass. Sounds easy enough, right? Changelog Previous Versions

@Clippy Thanks for playing! Hm, I think it might be a bit of a problem how much what happens in the early part of the map can affect the difficulty later on. Depending on how much health you use, and what corpses are left near where the 4 arch-viles show up, it seems like the difficulty can fluctuate wildly in the later stages. I really am not sure how I can balance that, though. It honestly never occurred to me that you could get the blue armour secret by arch-vile jumping. I think I'll leave it, though. It's quicker than finding it "legit" but it costs you some health, so there's a price to pay. (For the record, I'm unlikely to ever include secrets that require an arch-vile jump, since killing the arch-vile would lock you out of the secret and I don't like that). Eye switch = BFG, which is why it's a secret. And I agree that the teleporter at the start opened by the blue key is too easy to miss. @LVENdead suggested making the blue skull texture appear on the start building when the teleporter opens to indicate the connection, and I'll probably implement that in the next version.

@LVENdead Thanks for playing; I appreciate the feedback. I know the visuals aren't great in this one, but I, being a stubborn fool, said this WAD would be vanilla-compatible at the start, and I'm sticking to it, damnit! Earlier drafts of the main arena were a bit prettier, but I had to cull a lot of detail to prevent it turning into a mess of HOM. Heck, the wooden "escarpment" you mentioned was originally added to reduce the amount of stuff that could be on-screen at once. I'm not sold on most of the combat in this one, either, but, as you said, that's why we need playtesters! The arch-vile fight, in particular, is really hit-or-miss. I've run through the map and obliterated them with ease like you did, but I've also had runs where they resurrect a bunch of tanky monsters like cacos and hell knights, which then end up shielding the Archies from the rockets. It's pretty dependent on what corpses are lying around where from the first two fights in that area, and I'm not really sure how to balance that. I agree that some pressure units and meat shields would help, but I'll have to give some thought as to where and when they appear. The room full of chaingunners wasn't supposed to be particularly challengin, I just wanted to give the player the chaingun in a way that's slightly less boring than "here's a chaingun on the floor." If other people also think it needs spicing up, though, I might add something else there. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the final fight. If I only got one encounter right, I'd like it to be that one. End on a high note, and all that. Removing the pain elementals from that arena was a good choice, I think. You seemed to have a lot more fun there than @Biodegradable did. You're right that it's "80% there," I think. I'll wait until I've gotten a bit more feedback before making changes so I have a better idea of how, exactly, to improve things. And yes, this was intentionally a different style to MAP01. My goal with this WAD is to experiment with different types of levels in maps 1-3, then tie together all those different "themes" in map 4, hopefully having learnt and improved along the way.

@Biodegradable Thanks for playing! Yeah, I wanted this one to be pretty spicy, but I might've gone a bit too far, especially in the last room. I think I'll replace the Pain Elementals in that fight with Cacodemons and give the player a little more plasma ammo. I want it to be tough, but not frustrating. When you said "that's too many arch-viles," was it genuinely too many? The amount I was aiming for was "almost, but not quite, too many." Oh, and as for the point where you said "that's not really a secret; there's a button right there," well,

MAP02: Perpetual Strife has been added! This one has a bit of a different feel to the first map, I think. I'm trying to experiment with different styles (I have 3 "themes" in mind for the first 3 maps, then map 4 will be a "best of," building on what I've learned from maps 1-3). @Clippy@JezChrist both asked to be pinged when the next map was ready... well, here it is! Naturally, I'm quite keen to hear what people think. Incursion_v0.20.7z

Not at all bad, especially for a first WAD. It's short, but engaging. This is a level that'll keep you on your toes for the 5 minutes it takes to finish it (at least, for a player of average skill like me). The arenas are just cramped enough that I felt under pressure without it being frustrating. I beat it on without finding any secrets, and, for the most part, the monster and item placement seemed harsh but fair. The final room with all the cacodemons gave me some trouble at first because I didn't notice the rocket launcher and tried to run away, which just led to the cacos gaining a serious positioning advantage in the red doorway (which really should be marked with DOORRED2, btw). That was one of several deaths for me. Visually, this is some top-notch use of vanilla assets. It looks like it'd be right at home alongside some of the nicer-looking IWAD maps. There's some good use of lighting, although it's maybe a little too dark in a few places, depending on what render settings you're using. Only graphical issues I noticed were the BLODRIP and CRACKLE4 pillars in the second screenshot there, as well as the ROCKRED in the pit near the plasma gun - the textures aren't aligned properly. You can fix it in Visual Mode by shift-clicking the texture to select all connected linedefs with that same texture, then pressing "a" to auto-align them (at least, that's how it works in Ultimate Doom Builder. idk if Doom Builder 2 is the same). I can also confirm that this map is, unfortunately, not vanilla-compatible. The map has far too many linedefs, and will almost instantly crash to DOS with a visplane overflow. You'll need at least a limit-removing port like CrispyDoom to run it. Actually, I opened the map in DoomBuilder and it looks like you could delete a lot of vertices without losing a significant amount of the aesthetic. Maybe even enough to prevent the visplane overflow. Also, I notice that nearly half the map has sector tag 2, but it doesn't seem to be attached to any action. I don't think that will cause any actual problems, but it's a little messy. All said, this is a really solid first map. I look forward to seeing what else you make!

@Suitepee Thanks for playing! You're the second person I've seen run right past the arch-vile that appears in the starting room without seeing him; he's actually triggered by picking up the blue key. I wonder if I should change it so he's harder to miss. Doesn't seem to negatively impact the map all that much, though. And I specifically made sure the chaingunner trap wouldn't kill the player. Just nearly kill them. :D

Here's a little preview of MAP02 - Perpetual Strife (WIP). This area was not easy to fit into vanilla limitations - I had to cut a few corners (well, linedefs) to prevent it from turning into a mess of Hall-of-Mirrors. But I think it was worth it for the chaos that gets unleashed here.