StarTanned

Thanks again, @Not Jabba! It's an honor to see my own work on such a list, given how much stellar content this community produces.

@zokum of course, but it's only reliable in the sense that it's repeatable in contrived and unintended ways. It's not at all reliable as a gameplay mechanic which players and mappers are intended to be able to use to their advantage. It scarcely matters in the end, but I feel fixing it or making it a proper, expected gameplay feature is the way to go, unless aiming to make a strictly demo-compatible port. I'm happy to be wrong though :)

I'm happy to hear it! If you have any notes, feel free to share so I can make my next maps even better :)

Especially since strafing wasn't second nature to a lot of us when we were kids and FPSes were still a relatively new thing.

In my recent/first map (Based Refueling), I did a bunch of little things with vanilla texturing to avoid making sector art super intricate by just combining textures that complement each other well. Stuff like using upper/middle/lower textures to break up the monotony of tall walls by using slightly different texture (BRONZE96 over BRONZE1). I also did things like using the white stone floor texture MFLR8_3 for broken ceiling lights, using TEKBRON1 as a "shipping container" type of texture, using MODWALL1 for cement or dirt steps, used still-frames of the blood textures to imply dry blood (also made a tall, repeating wall patch version to use similarly elsewhere), used WOODMET1's horizontal metal sections to match well with SUPPORT3, used COMPBLUE and BLAKWAL1 as upholstery for doomcute sofas and chairs, and generally using bits of textures as creatively as I could (like using SPACEW4 for bars in a doomcute forklift). I'm probably forgetting more than I remembered here. I wish I had more time to make computer consoles more interesting by using bits of them rather than just using the whole textures as often as I did, but in the end I mostly just animated the textures. I found that alignment and lighting were more than half the battle in making vanilla textures look good, and the real fun was finding textures that didn't break the atmosphere of an area (not too subtle, or not subtle enough) and aligned well with one another. I also didn't shy away from using Final Doom textures, which probably went a long way to making the cave-like areas a lot more convincing than they otherwise would have been.

Pretty funny that I was just considering making an E2M5 level remake as my next map, and was wondering about whether to stick to only to the D1 roster, or include D2 as well. Maybe a hybrid would even work well for replay value, where HMP uses only D1 stuff, but UV uses D2 as well?

A little-known fact is that Sandy Petersen is actually a figment of our collective imaginations. Our feeble minds cannot truly comprehend the cosmic horror that we co-exist with. Our brains instinctively protect us while playing his Doom maps by making them seem less fun and more frustrating. Otherwise they might expand a little too much, into the otherness where his tendrils can find us. Some even say that John Romero is another tendril of the same being there to smooth our brains with more agreeable texturing and gameplay, while others theorize that John Carmack is the true core of the being, rather than being a separate cosmic horror. Either way, the next time you're wondering why there is nukage seemingly flowing from a metal ceiling, or why there is what appears to be a giant arrow crudely hewn into the ground, remember to thank your brain for refusing to see their horrible truth.

It took a while, but the bugfix for the visually-broken switches is now up on idgames and Doomshack as well (in case anyone was waiting for that).

I haven't had a chance to play this yet, but massive props for using one of my favorite NES chiptunes.

Some things off the top of my head: the first time I ran into a spectre. The lights suddenly going out for the Imp ambush in E1M3. The E1M5 music was an eerie change of pace. A couple of ambushes in E1M6. The last teleporter in E1. First time I was caught by a slow crusher (E2M4 I think). The fake exit and dark area in E2M6 (and other spots too). The "hot start" and early ammo shortage in E3M3. The general ambiance and weirdness of E3M4. The NiN trap in E4M1. The first time I heard the revenant and arch-vile screams. A caco silently floating up right in front of me in Chasm. Hunted (and an assortment of well-known traps in Plutonia). Several spots playing fast monsters, like the caco room in Doom 2's Factory. The first time I experienced the all-ghosts bug.

Were the images still not in flat format? If you're not sure, highlight them all in Slade, right-click and choose "convert to..", then select "Doom Flat (paletted)" and "convert all" (etc)

Lots of moments I still remember with some clarity from my first playthroughs: impatiently trying several times to download the shareware KDitD release from a BBS over a 28.8 modem (or maybe 14.4) squinting at half-resolution mode until I got used to it (so I wasn't playing a slideshow or through a postage stamp-sized view) running around mildly confused in E1M2, stumbling across the outdoors area with the chaingun realizing the nukage floors hurt for the first time (a kid/dumbass "what's hitting me?" moment) being awed by the cool lighting effects in the dark maze area in E1M2 figuring out how to get to the soulsphere in E1M3 proudly noticing the rocketlauncher secret next to it (then promptly blowing myself up with the RL) panicking after I fell into an inescapable nukage pit as my soulsphere-boosted health drained going down the nukage tunnel in E1M4 leading to the early soulsphere, but missing the one-time lift up to it being confused on how I re-opened the doors in the octagonal room in E1M4 being cornered by a pinky in E1M4's dark maze area the "scarier" song in E1M5 and watching the bridge/ledge inexplicably rise up from the nukage pool the frustration of the last dark room in E1M5 impatiently waiting for school to end so I could go home and play more Doom E1M6's setpiece fight where the door closed behind me, and also its final fight seeing the lights flickering and glowing was so cool in various areas the first time I blew up a barrel next to a monster and saw it gib the first time I found the chainsaw the first time I found E1M9 the first time I accidentally discovered the automap (during a fight, of course) the finale of the episode (yay! i think I beat Doom! I wonder where this teleporter will take me?) hearing what Doom sounded like on my friend's PC with a SoundBlaster instead of my lowly Adlib with PC squeaker noises begging my dad to get a 486 with a SoundBlaster

Funny enough, I just don't want to waste players' time by showing them out of bounds areas and make them think they're worth struggling to get to. Of course sometimes I also want to retain some secrecy. Mostly stuff that a computer area map might not realistically have programmed into it (super high-security areas, fresh tunnels, etc). I understand why it would be a pet peeve, but I don't go out of my way to make those kinds of secrets an unrewarding chore, so I hope it's a fair trade-off. That said I went for the "simplified" option in my first map, because a pet peeve of mine is having to zoom in to make sense of the rat's nest of linedefs that an over-detailed map can leave you to sift through. I figure if players really want every last pointless visual detail they can just use iddt or open the map in a level editor, so I decided it would be more of a courtesy to give them a to-the-point view.

At the risk of being annoying, the more comments I read in this thread, the more I hope folks remember that mapping is meant to be fun for the mapper too, not a second job. Just the fact that they're even worried about this situation shows their passion, so let's make sure not to kill it! There are going to be flaws and worse moments in every map. It's a tough, time-consuming hobby. Let's not forget that playtesting is just as important to make sure that 100% tasks are fun! The few playtesters we have who worry about things like secrets and 100% tasks are just as amazing as the best mappers. You can join their ranks if you worry about these things too. That way if the map ever hits Decino's stream, it's less likely to benefit from Yakety Sax playing in the background as he wall-humps for 20 minutes. But even so, it will still happen from time to time. As the UV-maxing type I always remind myself that I have to take the lumps to taste the sweetest sugar in life. If a map is awesome enough to want to 100% it, but 100%ing it isn't working out, I've learned to let it go and not sour my overall enjoyment. (And I'm trying to free up more time to help playtest too).

I'm a newbie mapper so I'm certainly doing it wrong, but FWIW in my first released map I've experimented with a hybrid approach including tagged and untagged secrets, so players will generally find something in almost every interesting nook and cranny, even if they don't find a "true" (tagged) secret. That way maxers still have a 100% to shoot for, but everyone gets some kind of reward if they go out of their way a bit. I'm also borderline OCD about texture usage and alignment, which will hopefully make the misaligned/weird ones stand out enough for players to spot them without wall-humping much they wouldn't instinctively try anyway. And just in case, I've set a personal rule that all of the tagged ones at least should be on the computer area map or show their rewards off in plain sight before the real hunt begins (and the map itself is meant to be relatively easy to find). That way folks will probably find almost everything just by looking into interesting corners or humping computer panels or other weird walls, and if they missed anything it should almost certainly be on the map, and for those who dislike looking on the map, will still be behind some misaligned or weird texture. Maybe this might even make it more fun for folks watching the stream too, as they will probably more easily see that misaligned wall the streamer walked right by... Edit: I should mention that to me a secret is something worth finding, not just a tiny closet with no eye-candy and an armor bonus, because there's nothing worse than wall-humping for 5 minutes only to realize it was an obvious computer terminal you missed, and the secret wasn't even worth finding.