work in progress... finally

[leperking]

Been working on a map now for the last few days after slogging through tutorials (note: thanks to AlysiumX for his.)

Just looking for comments, criticism and suggestions as I'm overtired and out of ideas right now. Thought I'd come poke around. Here's a shot in DB.

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/5551/40179666ms6.png

Tumdeetum.

[Aliotroph?]

Comments: looks like a DOOM map.
Criticisms: haven't seen it yet
Suggestions: post real screens or somethign playable.

Hard to say anything about it due to lack of knowledge of the textures and heights. It does look like you're spending some time with it though, which puts you above most guys who make a new map in a hurry, talk about how cool it is, and wonder why we hate it. :)

Now go sleep, finish the map, and we'll tell you more when we see/play it.

[leperking]

Good point. Welp, it's "done" now. There's no difficulty set up, aside from one minor difference in "hard" mode.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AU5BRRI6

Hopefully that works. This is my first map, so I hesitate to post it, but what the hell. It's a learning experience. I have no title for it, so let's just call it green hell for now.

[Nomad]

I gave it a go, and thought it was pretty decent for a first shot at a map. My suggestions would be to add more texture variation, as well as to not let ceilings escape your attention as well. Lots of folks detail their floors but leave the ceiling drab, and it kind of takes away from the experience. But you don't have to go crazy with it, of course.

Also, one thing that I kind of disliked, was that your sector heights were pretty huge; ceilings were really high, and some of the floors were really tall. The room with the spectres and the lowering platform has kind of a bad sense of vertigo, and not in the good "Doom" way.

Those are really my only gripes, though. Keep up the good work!

[edit]Oh, and I noticed some misaligned textures in the room with the crates. If you don't plan on working more on the map, I wouldn't worry about it, but otherwise you might want to fix that.

Hard to say anything about it due to lack of knowledge of the textures and heights. It does look like you're spending some time with it though, which puts you above most guys who make a new map in a hurry, talk about how cool it is, and wonder why we hate it. :)

Kinda like my first map? ;D Ok, I do admit that my Cube map sucked, but it at least was an interesting concept. :P

[ace]

Clearly, for someone who is new to mapping, I'd guess you've played quite a few yourself, as I can tell from this that you know what makes a good map (that, or you just have an innate ability regarding such).

For one, the map was challenging, but not too overly difficult (at least on HMP), and there was just enough health/ammo to get by without feeling oversupplied. On top of that, you managed to avoid what most new mappers don't--inescapable traps; I actually fell into the lava next to the red skullkey room and stereotypically expected to be stuck, but much to my surprise you did make sure the player could escape. I love to see this, because most new mappers don't think about these little factors.

It's good to see you've learned and made use of most of the Doom functions as well; it's clear to see you haven't mastered them yet (mainly the fact that the bridge in the opening area doesn't change texture when it meets the top displays this, that and the quite acceptable lack of editing "tricks"), but most new mappers stick to doors (or lack thereof) alone, so it's good to see you've made use of many of these, even if just to test them.

Overall, aside from one or two corridors feeling a bit claustrophobic, and the above-mentioned misalignments (detail I don't care so much about), this is a great start. Keep up the great work! :)

[Aliotroph?]

You've inspired me with that Cube map, which reminds me, I have to get back to what that inspiration caused me to build. Hehehe. It'll be right up your alley. :D

I'll reply to this again when I get a chance to play through the map.

[leperking]

the bridge in the opening area doesn't change texture when it meets the top

Really? That's weird, I thought I set both switches to make it do that. Let me double check.

And wow, thanks for the praise, everybody. I appreciate it.

EDIT: I have both of the switches specific to that bridge set to 68, so I don't know what happened! If you could go over what you did, it'd help me figure it out. I'd hate to have a bug like that kicking around. Thanks!

Second edit: Holy crap. I didn't set the lava to be hurty. Lemme fix that. WHOOPS!

[Aliotroph?]

If I had DB installed I'd look, but the bridge didn't work for me either. Everything else worked well enough though.

We seem to have entered the era of people who care about their first map. The last couple I've played have had the obvious marks of a newbie but have had thought. It's refreshing. :D I liked the room with the big columns, and the red room with the blood, though the ceiling texture seemed the wrong colour for me.

The balance monster-wise was surprisingly good too. Playing on UV that revenant gets nasty but is doable.

So a few quick things that would make this prettier and a bit more playable:

The darkness hurts. Rooms that stick with light levels at 0 are really, really disorienting to play and deserve moderation, especially when bisected by areas that are bright (the bridge). Yeah, dark areas with bright bits do look very cool in DOOM though.
I liked that you had a mostly consistent theme with the Hell stuff. The transitions between the different colours and areas might need some tweaking though.
The crate maze reminded me of some of the ones in DOOM II. Only thing I found wrong was some of the crates were the wrong size for their textures. That stands out a lot with things like crates.
The bridge room tried to do something neat with the lighting. Play with that more. You can sometimes make even boring rooms look a lot cooler by making lighting that fits well. Even just making sure you have a light source in a place that makes sense, and putting some shadowed bits in behind things will work wonders. :)
I liked the columned room, despite Nomad's comment about high ceilings, DOOM lends itself to building interesting vertical features. What that one room needed was a bit of ceiling detail and some for the walls. If you detail the wall right you can inset the door a bit without making it obvious it doesn't have the brick texture-split thing going on.


Now go build more. I think you're gonna be awesome at it. :)

[leperking]

Ok, I've gone with a few suggestions here and there and adjusted lighting throughout for a dimmer feel to it in general, but hopefully without anything being TOO dark. Added some decoration. Still can't figure out what is wrong with the bridge, because I don't see the problem you've described, unless I misunderstood. Let me just babble what I see and you can tell me if it works or not. I set it up, basically, so that whether you hit the switch on the wall or the switch in the blood that the bridge changes from blood to the floor texture, (which works when I play, so far as I can tell,) and then stays that way even when you take the bridge back down. That's how it seems on my computer, anyway.

So anyway, here's a bit of difference to the level. Nothing major, just ambience/atmosphere/architectural stuff, mainly.

EDIT: Okay, the switch in the blood doesn't make the texture change. What have I done wrong? I have the sector tag set properly, the correct action (68) set, so I guess I must have missed something. Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: Since I still haven't figured that out, I'll worry about it later. Here is the "final" version of my level. Lighting changed quite a bit. For reference, the light level wasn't even nearly at 0, but I digress. Hopefully the ambience is more consistent now.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WI7NQ92M

[Aliotroph?]

This version was easier on the eyes with the light. DOOM has a funny way of doing light where you really can only change it in increments of 16 for any noticeable effect. Some of the rooms could use light sources. Looks weird to have whole rooms without light sources unless they're quite dark.

I noticed the difference with the switches this time. Weird. The other thing is the floor under the exit door in that room has a different texture that doesn't match the surroundings. Oh, and the stairs in the green room with the blue door have misaligned textures on the sides.

Only other things I can say are style things and it's best to let you play with mapping and build your own unique style. The gameplay balance was pretty good.

[cmart]

This was a cool and enjoyable little level. I rather liked the flow of gameplay, good fights all around.

I'm not positive, but I think I know the problem with the bridge. If you notice, using the switch by the wall results in the texture changing correctly. However the one in the slime doesn't. The reason for this is that the switch is grabbing the flat from in front of it as the one to change the bridge flat to. In the case of the switch in the nukage, that happens to be the slime flat, so no change occurs. I'm not sure how to fix this outside of redesigning the bridge, unfortunately.

[Nomad]

I think Cmart hit the nail on the head there! I'm not sure what would be the best way to get around that either.

[leperking]

This is a more finished version of the map. I've added some rooms, I moved the switch in the blood to the other side, so it isn't plainly evident and maybe people will notice the one on the wall first. Added difficulty differences, so that I'm too young to die should be a decent walk and ultra violence should be pretty hard. Fixed a bunch of texture alignment, tweaked a few things here and there. Lemme know what you think. Thanks for all the feedback, I really appreciate it. I'll try to do better in the future, I'm glad my first map isn't a hideous flop!

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Z6W50P3D