Fabricating Chaos

Hi, I played this in prboom complevel 2. Demo attached below. There's a few missing texture errors in the red key area. If you tested this in a hardware rendering port such as GZDoom, it probably appeared like knee-deep liquid, but in Doom's traditional software rendering, it displayed some bleeding floor texture / hall-of-mirrors-like effects. (img) You need to use some advanced self-referencing sector trickery to get the deep water effect in software rendering. Even, then I thought it made the gameplay in the final battle a little clunky; i would have preferred just flat floors there, honestly. There's also some blood falls that bleed through the floor. (img) (not a pun) There's a trick where you make the two sectors the bloodfalls fall between have two different light values, floor heights, or floor textures to prevent that from happening.

Pretty cool map so far, I really like the verticality used here. It's a pretty dynamic layout with a lot of up and down movement which is cool. The linedef actions being used are kinda cool too. I did find all the darkness and the blinking lights a bit disorienting and it made the combat a little frustrating. I'd probably recommend removing most of the lighting effects as most of them don't seem to help the map much. I also missed a pretty important soulsphere in my first run. But for the most part I found most of the situations to be tough, yet fair.

Some of the traps in this map have little to no warning, which isn't totally bad but if you don't know about them ahead a time, its pretty easy to casually trigger multiple layers of traps unknowingly and cause a real mess to deal with, which often got me killed. The yellow key area was probably the worst offender with spectres popping out of the floor in the dark. That was really rough! I usually always recommend to replace spectres with pinky demons, but I see how they fit in this creepy void-like environment. So if you want to keep them, I'd surely recommend putting them in some sort of a closet or drop down from a lowering floor out of the ceiling, and perhaps with a switch operated action instead of walkover ones.

Also I'm not exactly sure how I got off the balcony with the rocket launcher. It seems like I should be able to jump right off but there's impassable lines or something? I think it's mandatory to be able to get down there too. I also did get down once without shooting the switch first and ended up getting stuck down below with no way out. You might need a more visually intuitive way to show when you are and are not supposed to go down there.

There's also an important lift that could probably use some sort of lift texture, or any texture different from the surrounding walls. I got confused for a few seconds and thought I was in a dead end.

I really like the gold decorations near that last switch shown in your screenshot, but a lot of other areas seem kinda neglected in comparison. Some stronger attention to texture alignment could really do your map some favors. Since there's a lot of height variation in this, that can be a bit of a drag, but you could always do that John Romero trick where he just seperates areas of changing floor/ceiling heights with some kind of support texture. (img) Also because the map is pretty dark, maybe you could make some alcoves with torches in them so that the perimeter of the room is easier to see in the darkness. I think you could use an exit sign in front of the exit too.

Thanks for posting your map! I look forward to playing the other maps you come up with

Woah, that's a tough one. I died twice to what I assume is the final fight and gave up for the moment. I agree with most of 40oz's criticisms: the map felt overly dark overall, to the point where it felt more frustrating than atmospheric to be honest, and the vertical alignment needs some more work. I was too confused by the impassable lines next to the rocket launcher and managed to get stuck without shooting the switch just like 40oz did. I generally didn't mind the trap design, enjoyed the generous supply of plasma/rockets, and felt like I was given enough health to allow for some mistakes, but your usage of instantly rising monsters is clearly off. You should never let the player approach these holes while the monsters are still hidden! Also it is possible for mancubuses near the first soulsphere to get stuck if they step on the lowering wall and remain there, ending up partially suspended in the air: this should be easily fixable with a simple "block monster" line. Overall you're definitely showing promise: the map has a clear style/vision that remains consistent throughout the whole thing, and the gameplay is challenging but reasonably fair and fun. Keep mastering your mapping techniques and you'll surely become a force to reckon with!

Here is my prboom-plus demo, hope it helps!