Hello! Converted lurker here.

[Zerofuchs]

Ola! 

 

Long time lurker, kinda made the decision to hop into the forums after watching LVENDead's little rant on "best work." It's a good watch, I recommend. As it is said, it's a shame if talent is wasted - even if said talent is only a little. 

 

I've been playing around with SLADE and Doombuilder intermittently for years, in that time got about... a couple maps I consider okay, one I personally think is pretty nifty, and at least another half dozen in the "didn't pan out" archives. Very casual rate of production.

 

Have trouble getting feedback since it turns out most of my buddies aren't huge into classic DOOM, even if they'll occasionally spin up Brutal Doom for a lark.

 

So, in the interests of getting a little critique, and biting the bullet on showing the world my work, I've compiled the most relatively solid of my maps into a short PWAD for Boom, and request folks give it a go and let me know where my weaknesses and strengths are. Thematically, Doomguy has been imprisoned by a duke of hell and busts his way out before visiting the duke's castle and expressing his unhappiness with the arrangement. Challenge wise... low with some surprises. Pistol starts advised but not enforced.

 

Few screenshots (yes I've already fixed the texture in the first one).

 

 

 

 

Apologies for anything glaring I've missed in terms of linedef weirdness, unpegged textures, or misalignments that aren't secret hints (please do point them out for me for a fix). Play tested quite a lot, but you know how it can go.

 

PRBoom+ should work for all of them, GZDoom should do fine, Crispy/Choco aren't really recommended but should let you finish the maps. All are feature complete. I've built these to be fairly vanilla, Boom compatible maps and so nothing too fancy is needed. MBF21 is recommended.

 

My general working philosophy for mapping is relatively bite sized, condensed combat encounters, and a few traps or side routes which surprise folk on the first pass, but aren't grating enough to detract from later playthroughs. A bit Romero I guess, but trying not to be quite as mean and with way less visual flair.

 

Let me know if you enjoy, where I could focus on improving, and your thoughts on my little gimmicks and tricks.

 

If I've omitted any credits, please do let me know and I'll correct it for a re-up. If any music needs to be removed, I'll oblige. Otherwise it's all vanilla assets anyway.

 

Plan for now is to finish the pack out with 3 more maps (2 regular, 1 secret) over the next month or three, but it's hit a point where I would really like some feedback before progressing. Also wanted to clarify permissions on the MIDs, as I'm unsure how it works with Lee Jackson tracks (MTWID2 does have a permissive license at least and I've included the link to it in the readme). Once all that's done, I'll upload to idworld proper.

 

What better self intro to Doomworld than a map making show n' tell? Thanks in advance if you pick it up, enjoy, and looking forward to discussion.

 

Castle.zip

Edited April 15 by Zerofuchs
Update file in OP

[glu]

Hello and welcome!

 

I played your maps, and the first thing I have to say is that is was fun, which is a good start I think!

I had a good time playing them.

 

First of all, I'm not particularly comfortable giving advice on map creation (as I'm a terrible map maker and I have difficulty synthesizing

), but I'll try to say what I found interesting (subjectively) and I hope I can be useful.

But yeah, take my advice with a grain of salt.

 

You have good ideas for your map layouts/structure, especially the last map in my opinion. But sometimes It can be a bit choatic, and hard to understand where you are. It maybe has something to do with texture choices or the rooms which are often small/do not have a lot of space in it.

 

But your maps were also atmospheric and I loved that. These cracks in the ground map 06 (again) for exemple are the kind of detail I love, and I think that you should continue doing that, and that it really gives a soul to the maps.

 

Then, it was, for praticaly all the maps, very easy to avoid confrontation. Maybe find ways to force the player to kill the enemies before being able to progress.

 

For the items, I think you are very generous (especially for health), but generally speaking I often found ammo/health when I least needed it/I didn't find it when I needed it the most. And sometimes the emplacement of health/ammo made them a bit pointless. I think for exemple at the first map with all those doors that you can open, with stimpacks in them. Maybe be more carefull to their placement.

 

Also I think you should try not to put hords of enemies just in front of a door. Because then you open it and there are all in front of you stuck to each other and you just need to strafe left to right and shoot at them (as you cannot walk trough them), it's not of much interest in my opinion.

 

I need to mention the last map again. If I understood correctly, the red and blue keys are optional, only the yellow one is really necessary to finish the map. If it's just for gathering items, maybe open those rooms with switches instead.

 

Very good choice for the midis.

 

I think there are things to rework, but what you do is already good and I really enjoyed playing your maps. You are already much better than I am lol.

I woud love to play more of your works in the future.

 

Keep making things :) !

Edited April 6 by glu

[Serene Sierra]

Hey all, I am too a fellow lurker, I've not much to share so I don't post anything but thought I'd pop in and say hello since you made a lurker thread.

I'd love to make some levels but I lack time and I'm too stuck on the whole perfection thing so nothing really goes anywhere and gets tossed out.

 

Here is a little something from my horde of unfinished things, an attempt at a doomcute(ish) gloomy house, I came from build mapping so I like stuff with resemblence to real spaces.

 

I don't have anything for anyone to play or that great feedback to give to you OP but I liked the simplicity and compact fights you made, the Wolfenstien homage was a pleasant surprise, I hope you keep it going and I'll pop in to see if you release it :)

Edited April 6 by Serene Sierra
Feedback for OP

[Riclo500]

These were great! Definitely alot of secrets and traps
 

 

[Zerofuchs]

Thanks for the feedback so far, already some good suggestions which I'm using to make adjustments. Notably, tweaking to encourage players to stick around for a  given fight, bottleneck a bit less through doors and entryways, and refining pickups and placements a little to be more useful at the right times. Also can see from the video above that a little more signposting may go a long way.

 

That doomcute is pretty solid @Serene Sierra - you've got a knack. If you're coming from Build, maybe you could try some Doomified homages to classic Build maps from the big 3 :) Although room over room limitations make it a little rough to match like for like.

 

 

[dasfrodo]

Overall fun, but I think especially the earlier ones just feel like a couple of randomly thrown together room shapes. I gave up on the sixth map when I got thrown in a room with two barons of hell, a couple of imps, cacodemons and lost souls with no way to move around. I also completely missed that I picked up the blue key on map 6 which led to backtracking and general confusion. The key just drowned in other pickups and looked like a health bonus.

 

 

[LadyMistDragon]

Honestly I don't think "Baron's Demesne" feels much like a manor. 

 

But no, the many problems were already pointed out by other people. The only other thing I can say is to be a little bit less random where you choose to detail and where you choose to leave blank. The last map seems to go a long way toward solving that though:)

 

 

 

[Serene Sierra]

10 hours ago, Zerofuchs said:

Thanks for the feedback so far, already some good suggestions which I'm using to make adjustments. Notably, tweaking to encourage players to stick around for a  given fight, bottleneck a bit less through doors and entryways, and refining pickups and placements a little to be more useful at the right times. Also can see from the video above that a little more signposting may go a long way.

 

That doomcute is pretty solid @Serene Sierra - you've got a knack. If you're coming from Build, maybe you could try some Doomified homages to classic Build maps from the big 3 :) Although room over room limitations make it a little rough to match like for like.

Oh a bit of feedback I think may be good for you is to maybe put something like a nook or trim infront/above the very tall door or two I saw to make them more seamless to the rooms they are in.

 

Thanks for the compliment, and yeah the lack of stacked sectors is a hard one but I feel the limitations are oddly helpful, I could had detailed the doomcute more but I feel that loses the point of it. :D

Edited April 7 by Serene Sierra
Fixed the quote bubble -.-

[Zerofuchs]

Right bit of an update, spent the last week or so tweaking and revamping... first 4 maps are in a much better state now I think, more visually interesting and with a better flow for continuous play. Still all fairly easy to beat each even on UV pistol start, but a little less forgiving in terms of letting you avoid fights. I'll upgrade them from "greybox" to "draft" I suppose. 

So far:
Fully polished: None
Draft/RC: Maps 01-04
Greybox/Concept Build: Maps 05-06
Still percolating in idea space: Maps 07-09

I've attached the current version of the mapset for the curious and as always look forward to feedback good and bad. 

Castle.zip

 

 

Edited April 15 by Zerofuchs
Screenshots

[DoomGappy]

I want to give this a go, but no time right now. Will subscribe for updates. 

[prfunky]

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited April 15 by prfunky
wrong post reply

[DoomGappy]

Got to it today. Very cool set of levels, although rough around the edges in some parts. You will see it in the video, I point out some things that feel a little weird. Still, very cool. Keep it up!
 

 

[Zerofuchs]

Right so no new version yet, didn't get too far on it last week or so. General update is 5 I'm still pondering on how to refine, while 6 I think is in a fairly good place barring polish passes and a few tweaks around superfluous key usage, currently got my first few areas laid out for map 7.

 

Considering ideas on map 8 and the secret level. 

 

Maps 1-4 will be additionally polished, but I'd call them good enough to put aside until the rest are at least playable.

 

[Zerofuchs]

General update, the mapping process is slow for me, but got a fair amount done on map07. That said, there's still a big chunk of map to grey box, placements for combat and supplies, and general detailing and lighting to do.

Spoiler

 

[Zerofuchs]

General update:
Map01-05 in stasis
Existing Map06 moved to slot 8, initial rough layout of new Map06 done
Fair amount of progress on Map07 but still not yet at fully playable. Not even all that huge a map, but like any good penultimate map I'm trying to make it stand out a bit more.
Map09 aka the secret level... trying to figure out whether I want to go silly gimmick, overwrought labyrinth, or plain ol' slaughter.

[Zerofuchs]

Update this week is... not much to update, didn't get a lot of mapping done.

 

Did do a little work on ideas for a submission to the Doom Maximum community project, and wrote a little script to streamline doing demos with PRBoom (reads a JSON document and launches the game, restarts on exit and renames demos automatically until a max attempt threshold set in the config JSON is reached).

 

Apologies if this seems a bit superfluous what with no actual update on the mapset, but these posts are also a bit of a personal way to keep myself focused on getting the maps done - as one might guess, I am highly distractible.

Edited May 13 by Zerofuchs
Minor Phrasing

[Zerofuchs]

Distracted again this last week, X4 has utterly consumed my free time lately, along with the new Star Citizen patch providing many new avenues of complaint for the long suffering fan... so outside of some minor tweaks, a minor WAD breakage incident when I borked adding a custom texture, and a removal of custom textures from the WAD until I have textures worth the effort.

 

Since I'm kinda incompetent artistically, I suspect there won't be many if any of those (unless I'm using a resource pack), although theoretically I could opt to go in for one of those Ribbicks type monocolour maps. How one can create so much style with such a limited palette continues to low key amaze me.

 

So, a non-update, factually, alas.

 

Do have some leave this week though so I plan on putting some fairly significant mapping time in.

[Zerofuchs]

Update: Some solid progress I think, Map07 still not complete but put a good bit of productive time on it this week. Ironing out the navigation issues, setting up encounters and items, puzzling over an annoying visplane error (I think) near the beginning of the map.

 

Some screenshots for the curious:

Spoiler

 

 

[Zerofuchs]

Slightly delayed update:
Map07 is done! Or at least, it's fully playable and all the things are in. Polish and (re)balancing will continue along with other maps.

Two more maps and I'll slap a beta sticker on it and get the fine grit sandpaper out for rough edges.

Those maps are on the backlog for the next few weeks while I work on something to submit for RAMP.

Edited June 4 by Zerofuchs
Thread link to ramp

[Zerofuchs]

Update: None to speak of, having a case of mapper's block with regards to RAMP and so, unless I go into a dwarf fortress style trance, may miss it out this year. Work shall thus resume on my regular map pack this week.

 

I have also picked up on the DWMegawad club thread, Biowar and Equinox, and I think I've picked up on a few mapping lessons from playing and reading the discussion on Biowar, that I might not otherwise have paid attention to. I would recommend joining in if you have not already:  

 

Edited June 16 by Zerofuchs