knifeworld

Was wondering if I'd see this appear on DW. Looks amazing! Also, I can't believe one of the first things I did with a MIDI file is paired with a map called Goth Girl Butt, though I'm not complaining! I just found out it was called L1_var.mid in the original. The guy I found the rips from just matched the files with the level names apparently. https://www.karlsitretro.com/game-midi-dos-c/

Absolutely loved Ashes, so it's nice to see there's new stuff on the way!

it's full of BEANS!

Highly recommend, there's plenty of bangers in here + had a lot fun mapping for this!

PP markers are for the wall textures

Nah, it sounds like everything was set up just right, even the flat that seems to have borked things. So now I'm not sure why it's doing that, I wish I could help! Although, if I'm reading you right, your sprite replacements are also between the pp_ markers? they should be between SS_START and SS_END.

Probably should've posted this in the editing subforum, guessing a mod will move it soon anyway. With that said, if it's only a custom flat you're using so far and it converted just fine, idk why it would give that error. If there's wall textures too, make sure you're hitting "import from base resource archive" and then add anything custom between PP_START and PP_END into both the patch table and TextureX.

Done! Fixed the monsters being missing on medium from the last 2 fights, also added block lines at the final area because of cacos flying too far away. https://mega.nz/file/3ksVmSQA#BrgkuiyZYjANURVUQkjtVDzbhvnCTqbN9hrPrc3Y94M Edit: Forgot to say that I decided to keep the map name as Beneath Concrete Skies.

Thanks for testing and playing! I'm likely going to decide on a different map name, will let you know as soon as possible! BTW, I forgot that monsters and weapons can be placed on Medium skill when I was making the last 2 secret rooms, so nothing appears in them at all apart from some ammo. Would it be ok to make these missing monsters and weapons appear on both difficulties, but just have less/different monster types based on skill, as intended?

Nice map! Although it could do with a bit more variety in light levels and texturing, I gave Refinery a go first and the same can be said I think, but both are decent maps. Didn't see anything borked, but the sky here seems jank and looks goofy just ending right away and being shootable. Don't ask me what imgur did to the sshot, I don't know either lol.

Excellent atmospheric map, pls make more!! I had to play in Crispy because of the missing SKY3, was going to mention fixing it but looks like you're already onto it but had just forgotten.

Hopefully it's not too rude of an ask, but it would be cool to be included in the playtesting credits since I did give some feedback regarding the switch that opens the exit on MAP01 https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2665560. I'm really not trying to complain at all, maybe you're only noting down people who did more extensive testing, (Edit: maybe you already had your eye on fixing the switch being pressable thru the bars anyway), or only players who said what difficulty they tested in (I tested/play on UV). Sorry if this is rude or annoying.

Finally ensured the puzzles for the last 2 secrets work properly, and fixed other stuff along the way. Might need to further adjust monster difficulty, but everything is fully done! https://mega.nz/file/L4UXVQ5Q#nllXDcbaLewH0ff1acqBy9iivSEayBx7cYJMGAs__qM Included the resources in the wad, with my own custom sky merged in already, just so playtesters don't have to fumble around and do this themselves or wait for a compilation / RC, so don't forget to keep the sky tex and remove everything else except for the map and music, when it comes time to compile.

Update to Beneath Concrete Skies, previous version here: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2664210 https://mega.nz/file/Wo9gWKxA#KiM2PqEE_jleJ1KBYgeBJna3wXDz0uQ9BG7JQojaMto The penultimate room and puzzle is done at last! The 6th secret also has its own entire room and puzzle now, instead of just being a sector you had to walk through to climb onto the exit. Have finished initially setting tags + control sectors for the re-created 6th secret 10 mins ago, so I'm dropping this here to say the map is essentially fully complete, but I need to test the 6th secret, and probably tweak enemy and weapon balancing for newly added monsters. 5th secret / punultimate room: Proper room+puzzle for 6th secret:

it's Show Minimap in the automap options of newer dsda-doom versions

I'd like to know as well. Hopefully you have the time to bring it to the finish line, @Codename_Delta . People put effort into mapping for this, myself included.

Alien Creature

No longer interested in this, but I might give the finished product a go (barring anything made by RMG)

Yeah. I accidentally opened the door before realizing what all the text on the floor meant anyway. I also didn't see the white banjo icon on the floor on my first playthrough because dead zombies or imps were in the way of it I think. Just checked and I don't see any arrows in either of the instruments, but I did see this lower wall texture which I didn't notice last time. The wall on the automap is also white, so I actually think it's too obvious now, I'd personally set it to "appear 1 sided", but keep the lower texture as a clue.

@Rabbid I played the most recent posted version of your map, it's decent in the sense that I can see what you were going for! But it's quite rough around the edges. For starters, many of the rooms are box-like and have the same general light level. Just a little bit of extra effort in giving the rooms different shapes and variation in lighting and height will improve this a lot. The doomcute sector art and the initial guitar and banjo shaped rooms stand out though. There's no way to tell that you have to press on the black wall to progress, none that I found, anyways. I was wandering around in the guitars + banjo for ages until I just randomly decided to hump the walls in the black area. 80% of the combat in this map seems to consist of being in a thin hallway, opening a door, shooting shotgunners and zombiemen for 1000 years, retreating to grab a medkit every now and then, and eventually getting so bored that you decide to try and run into the room to SSG the shotgunners faster, and then dying. EDIT: A quick fix around this hitscan fight issue would be adding blue armor pickups somewhere in the hitscan-heavy rooms, one each, or just before entering them. But in general I'd personally redesign some of these fights to not be so heavy on shotgunners/chaingunners at all, and I'd add an extra way in or out that doesn't have a door, so that it doesn't just become a boring door-fight scenario. Both of these switches are repeatable, but I don't think I saw any reason for them to be. I like the BFG fight at the end! But there's so many hellknights left when everything else is dead that it gets kinda grindy and boring, I'd honestly remove a 3rd of them or more. Also, a bunch of imps appeared or made their way into the guitars at some point near the end of the map, idk what's happening there or where they came from. The switches before the 2nd secret are a bit too obvious, I'd add more similar looking pillars/crates and darken the room a bit to make it more confusing or adventure-like. In general, everything works just fine but the rooms could be more interesting and have a bit more effort put into texturing and detailing, like support beams, windows, computers, skylights, pools of liquid, broken walls/bricks, etc. As for the fights, some of them could use more variety in enemy types and in their general design, for example you could put an archvile on a pillar in a corner, or behind some revenants or imps, some hitscanners could be replaced with some projectile throwing enemy instead.

This is perfectly fine for a second map, good stuff! There are things you can improve though such as lighting variation, texture variation and wall detailing, and placing enemies to be more of a threat or surprise. As for custom or GZdoom exclusive enemies, pretty much nobody at all likes the stealth monsters, so I'd remove the stealth shotgunner. The enemy helper dog has way too much health and is kind of out of place. But other than that there's nothing wrong with the enemies, they could just be placed more effectively in spots that will be more challenging for the player or as turrets to give some amount of area-denial. I'd also get into the habit of making sure hanging bodies are always the non-solid kind, unless they are very low down where it would actually make sense for them to block the player. In the original exe and in modern ports that respect how the original worked, the bodies would block you even if you can't see them because of infinite height collision. Many players choose to play with "strict" compatibilty settings in GZDoom too, this means that the bodies will be blocking for some people even if you're mapping with GZdoom UDMF format or any other GZDoom format. Example with one of the corpses: You gotta stop modifying peoples maps without permission, I mean you didn't post it this time, but still... Do you really need to edit someone elses map so you can play it in the original exe when it wasn't even made for it? People make teleports without using the pad textures all the time tbh, it was easy to see the gate was either going to be a teleport, raise some stairs in front, or if it wasn't a beginner map I might have expected an invisible bridge/floor. No offence here, but when I read some of your reviews of new maps it sounds like you're exhaustively grading someones school work, and I get the feeling it might put some beginners off making new stuff because of your huge walls of text in which you (tend to) over-explain every single thing you didn't like about a map, and your fairly unnecessary scoring system. Almost noone "scores" wads this seriously, or at all tbh. At most, people will just give X/5 or X/10 as a casual note, and they won't say stuff like "this will drop your score completely". Simply saying how you think the map can be improved is really all that needs to be said.

yes

Ah ok yeah, I understand what you were getting at now, regarding flaws/mistakes. Yeah, the target audience is an important factor to keep in mind, although a mapper could still just unleash their wild creations on the unsuspecting masses, with the understanding not everyone will enjoy it. It's definitely a good idea to ensure new mappers notice their mistakes, but it sucks if people assume low effort just based on looks. Although at the same time with how easy UDB and other modern editors are now, you can sometimes tell when somebody hasn't really put that much effort in i guess.

Misaligned or 'poorly chosen' textures aren't bugs. Although, they can be mistakes made by (usually) newer mappers, but "bad texturing" in general is subjective, IMO. Creative use of Doom's worst textures, or unique/rare combinations of textures, is a thing, and can be a fun challenge. It's true that purposefully weird texturing will be out of place in a project where everyone has to follow Romero's design ideas or something, but in a personal project there's no limit on what the mapper can do. Tldr: How particular a map needs to be as far as texturing goes depends on the intention of the mapper, or on the rules of a project. I think you're right about lighting though for the most part, I get bored easily if a map has a lot of the same brightness everywhere, unless other aspects of the map are exceptionally interesting. But again it typically seems to be a beginner mapper mistake, so I usually give it a pass.

Shepardus beat me to it. The maps are just extremely well detailed (I took a peek in UDB), although I didn't know it was because of UDMF being less compact. With that said, I'm loving the 10x10 influence here and I was already sold on the map5 screenshot, very sunder-ish!