A Revision to Warehouse Base

[Pokeblue]

After a little over 18 months I have made some changes to my first map. Differences between the previous version include:

 

- Deathmatch starting points

- New secrets

- Exit sign (I'M EXITSEING???)

- Texture alignment fixes

- Added/removed some items and monsters

- More item and monster differences between difficulty levels

- Replaced your mom with 2 Revenants

- MOAR BOCKSES

- Other changes in geometry

 

Note: Once again it won't work under DOS or non-enhanced sourceports (like Chocolate Doom)

 

Screenshots:

Original post:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/115654-my-first-wad-i-hope-you-like-it/

 

New File:

Warehouse Base R1.zip

Edited January 23, 2022 by Pokeblue
Formatting

[FireWarden1000]

I completed Warehouse Base.wad with LZDoom on Ultra-Violence, well designed map, 75/100. The negatives, large amounts of empty areas. You travel through various hallways to find only 1 enemy in the area. I noticed most enemies do not ambush the player, and will appear from across the map. Find better hiding places for the enemies. Overall, I had a great time with the map. There is plenty of details in the map to give you the impression you are in a warehouse, and offices. My recommendations, reduce the size of the map to consolidate the map. Most of the map does not need to be explored to complete the map. Turn the map into 1 long maze, and every area would be explored by the player. Place enemies behind large boxes or computers to ambush the player.

[Stabbey]

Good texture alignment and detail work. This is a simple, but solid map.

 

- The teleport lines around the Berserk/invuln probably need to be bigger, as you can collect them without teleporting, as I discovered. I was going to comment that there was little for the invulnerability to be used on, but it was probably meant for that teleport secret.

- In the teleport secret, consider making the exit teleport past the enemies, or better yet, raise it up and put the switch to lower it past the enemies, to force the player to engage.

- Why wasn't the column with the Baron and SSG marked as secret? It seems like it should be, as it's hard to find.

- I agree that there need to be some more enemies in ambush. As it is this map has a lot of open space and not much to be threatening.

[Large Cat]

I've played through the map on UV using Crispy Doom, and I enjoyed it overall. The visuals are definitely warehouse, and the midi gives a map a light feel, which is fun. The combat is soft to match, easier than a typical Doom II level, so I think you hit the tone well.

 

I agree with others that there is a lot of empty space, and I think the number of walls closing areas off is part of that feeling, since you only face a few monsters at a time, and there's plenty of room to maneuver. I would recommend including a few combat setpieces where the opposition is a little hotter, either more enemies in a tight space, or a more open space where more enemies engage you. The big secret is sort of the latter, but having the whole featureless room to move around with fewer than ten monsters doesn't pack much of a punch.

 

Regarding visuals, I enjoyed the doomcute desks most of all, but I also think the crates were tastefully placed. The first maze-y section was the most detail-lacking, and it's probably my least favorite part of the map due to both this and the ammo famine that forces me to pistol enemies before getting my hands on a shell box. The map definitely picks up for me after that. I think you could also do more to imply light sources; right now, some area of the room are simply lit, while others are not. Some lights in the ceiling could go a long way here.

 

The invuln secret is a fun little scrap. I agree with the idea that the monsters should be between you and the exit, so you don't just feel inclined to pop in and back out again. Getting the chaingun is a pretty big deal here, since it makes many fights less of a slog. As rewarding as it feels to get the secret chaingun, it's such a boon to the pace of play that I would suggest not making it a secret at all. Either that, or providing a non-secret berserk. Either one would pick up the sedate pace of play. Then again, maybe a slower pace is what you want, in which case the regular shotgun is the perfect candidate.

 

I didn't realize it at first, but I think the SSG pillar (which does seem like it should be tagged as a secret) and other two secrets have a big error; their line actions have tag 0, which means they lower/lift the entire map. At first, I thought the walls all collapsed with the SSG pillar on purpose, but looking further, there are too many anomalies for me to think this isn't accidental. ZDoom-based ports have a fix for this that makes it apply how I think you intended it, but other ports will not fix this bug, so these secrets will have some unusual (but surprisingly non-breaking) behavior.

 

Commence Digression about Vanilla Compatibility

On 1/22/2022 at 11:30 PM, Pokeblue said:

Note: Once again it won't work under DOS or non-enhanced sourceports (like Chocolate Doom)

Last, there's the issue of compatibility. First things first, there's a good term to encapsulate the situation you describe here: I think you can say your WAD will run with "limit-removing" source ports, which Chocolate Doom is not. This sort of language is more ubiquitous, so it will ensure people get the right idea.

 

I found several reasons that your WAD wasn't working in more vanilla-adjacent engines. The first error I got was because of your Heavy Weapons Guy easter egg; you hadn't properly converted his graphic to Doom format and added him to the patch and texture tables. Second, you forgot to include markers to denote where the imported Doom I flats were, so the WAD didn't really know the format for your floor textures. I compiled a version of your wad that fixes both of these issues, as well as removing the redundant copy of the Doom I texture library. Here it is, if you would like it: warehouse_base_tinkered.zip

 

However, even with all of these fixes, your map has a much more fundamental barrier to being vanilla-compatible: it's too detailed. Or more descriptively, it's too open, meaning too much is getting drawn at once to be stored within vanilla doom's hard-capped memory limits. The effect of this is that, when I step into the main room, most of the space beyond the first wall doesn't get drawn and produces an unsightly HOM. Even worse, when I look to the right, the game crashes due to a dreaded visplane overflow, I suspect. You can read about visplanes here: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Visplane_overflow. Ultimately, it's up to you whether being vanilla compatible is worth it; you'll have plenty of people able to play your map either way, but true vanilla compatibility is the cherry on top for the Doomkids and other traditionalists out there. If you wanted to be vanilla compatible, you could chop the warehouse into smaller subrooms by raising some of the big walls all the way to the ceiling to reduce how much of the map can be seen at once. A great tool for this is the Visplane Explorer tool in Ultimate Doom Builder, which estimates how many visplanes are visible from the different spots around your map; any more than the limit of 128 will be marked in red for you.

 

Hopefully you found at least some of this helpful. If you have further questions, you can feel free to reach out to me, and I'll help you out as best I can! Good luck with your mapping, and I hope to see more work from you in the future.

[Pokeblue]

On 1/30/2022 at 1:37 AM, Large Cat said:

cool guy things

I read your reply and it's extremely helpful. I do know I didn't convert the Heavy texture, I just didn't bother originally, and most people seem to like the doomcute computers. I'm glad there are people like you to help me better my map making skills. I also want to thank you for taking the time to improve the map directly.

[Delisk]