Newbie needing advice!

[ATaadp]

Hello!

 

I'm pretty brand new to the Doom community, and I've recently started creating my first map!  By recently, I mean literally a few days ago; it uses only vanilla Doom 2 textures at the moment, and it's extremely rough.  I've been mostly self-taught over the last couple of days, but with frequent check-ins on this forum and YouTube for tutorials and whatnot.  I have so much to learn, but I'm having so much fun already! 

 

Is there anyone on here who would be willing to give a brief playthrough of the map and speak to some of the failings, successes, misunderstandings, and places most needing improvement?  I'd love some advice, as I don't have the prior experience to know what feels good to a seasoned player and what doesn't.

 

Please be nice :P There are unfinished rooms, most of the level is the same textures, texture alignment is probably way off in some places, keys are just kind of sitting around, secrets are kind of randomly hidden, weapon and ammo balance is off, different difficulties are not implemented correctly, enemies are just placed as reference for now (not really cohesive in any way), etc.  I'm mostly looking to see if I have the barebones ideas in place to make a good map from here!

 

You'll need to run it in GZDoom, and you'll need a copy of DOOM2.wad, but I doubt that'll be a problem for anyone here ;)

 

Map is MAP01 in "Castle.pk3."

 

Thanks!

 

-AT

Build.zip

[Stabbey]

I always recommend that new mappers at least skim through the basic tutorials on mapping:

 

- You only need to include Castle.pk3 in your zip file, not the entire build folder.

 

8 hours ago, ATaadp said:

Please be nice :P There are unfinished rooms, most of the level is the same textures, texture alignment is probably way off in some places, keys are just kind of sitting around, secrets are kind of randomly hidden, weapon and ammo balance is off, different difficulties are not implemented correctly, enemies are just placed as reference for now (not really cohesive in any way), etc.  I'm mostly looking to see if I have the barebones ideas in place to make a good map from here!

 

- You acknowledge that the map is unfinished and unpolished in all those areas. That's almost all of what needs to go into a map. It's very difficult to judge whether your barebones ideas are in place to make a good map without a finished map you are satisfied with. I suggest at least getting to that stage of completion first before asking for feedback. There's not a whole lot of use in users telling you things you already know.

 

- There's a soft-lock with the red key lift. If the player goes to the other side of the lift when it goes back up, they're stuck and have to cheat to escape.

- I feel like there's too much use of one-way silent teleportation.

- Too little health and ammo for the amount and type of enemies placed. I suggest playing many more user-made maps to get a better feel for encounter balance.