Wednesday, April 13, 2011

My Maps

HERCULINE'S HELL

Once upon a time, I grew ambitious and drew up a few Doom maps of my own. Two of them were called BLOOD BURDEN and OMINOUS OASIS and were intended to be part of a 32-level megaWAD entitled HERCULINE'S HELL. The alliteration was intentional and would follow in the titles of the other 30 maps, if I had ever created them. Below are a few screenshots from those levels and the comments people posted regarding them:

BLOOD BURDEN


"Some okay ideas for architecture with mediocre execution and gameplay. ZDoom requirement is superfluous, since it's only used for a few pointless stealth imps (this should be limit removing vanilla or boom instead). There's one fence which you can't shoot above despite there being nothing there. 2/5"






"Decent map and start of a upcoming megawad. 3/5"






"I was really impressed, if a little bored. The fighting is a bit too slow; however, the use of slow pacing in non-combat shows great discipline. I really liked how the atmosphere drew the player into a calm tide of uncertainty. But, yeah, I would work on making the fights more intense. Great use of lighting, also. I hope to see more. 5/5. PS. How do you get the RL? :P"






"no sir i dont like it"






"I want to say that I appreciate the effort put into this. However, I found a lot of flaws. There were a lot of rooms/areas that looked too similar and there was a lot of backtracking, which made the game play very slow. I did like the starting area, though--original design, nice use of the marble texture, strong architectural design. Keep thinking in this direction and I think you can make this map really good. 2/5 for now, though."






"This must be one of the biggest level entirely based on marble textures I have ever played. And with quite good action and nice secrets. This is so good! 5/5 - Optimus"




"Not bad, I've seen worse first-attempts :)"




"If you look at the automap, you will realize that this is just a thinly disguised Oblige map with ZDoom features. 3." ~ Kate "Pink Silver"




"Automatic 0/5 for author's dishonesty."




"It's a fucking Oblige map. Nothing more. 0/5"


"^ and ^^ agreed with"




"I have seen this map before.."




"1/5 just for not blatantly copying an Oblige map. Otherwise this is trash."






OMINOUS OASIS


"Once again I couldn't work out how to get the RL, which was a shame coz at one point I had no ammo and 64 rockets. Like the first, I thought it was a fun map that would benefit from more intense encounters (maybe intermix the pain elements, cacos, and imps more). Thanks for sharing."






"this is grandmama again , honey. doing great!!!!(and yes , i really am an old lady)"






"typical newb-ish map with quantity over quality and mechanical copy-pasted detailing over sense. filename length excess 8+3 rule."






"there is no change in map02 (zdoom)"






"Clearly, this also came from Oblige, and the author didn't admit (or credit the program, for that matter). 0/5 immediately."




"Oblige again..really? Are you that stupid??"




"TBTBEP2 (Too bad to be enjoyed properly 2) ~That guy over there"


"Voting 5, to counter the idiot that said that this is an oblige map."




"Not bad, but it's a little boring and textures are plain... well, you needed more work on it I think. 2.5/5 -playerlin"


"1 star only because you at least tried modifying the Oblige map."




As you can see comments were actually for the most part constructive and encouraging, both in the file comments and my Doomworld forum thread regarding the project, until someone calling herself Kate "Pink Silver" decided to comment in The Newstuff Chronicles that she believed my maps were not created by me but instead were authored by an automated random map generator program called OBLIGE. After that everyone (including both the reviewers and the creator of the program) seemed to jump on her bandwagon and I felt shunned by the community to the point that finally I totally deleted my original blog that had been intended to focus on the progress of my own projects. Instead I now blog about the works of others.


But despite appearances this blog post is neither intended to advertise my own apparently questionable works nor to lament the fact that they did not go over well with the Doom community at large.


The point of this post is instead simply to inform followers of this blog that my upcoming reviews of classic Doom levels are not totally uninformed opinions. I have some mapping experience, minor although it may be. I've used DOOMBUILDER and I know what linedefs, sectors, vertices and nodes are. Thus when I'm playing through a map I know something of what was involved in the author actually creating it. If I describe a map as being very detailed and complex that's not just a statement of my opinion but also a statement that I know something of how much work the author put into the map and that I admire those efforts.


So, starting with my next post, I intend to review here classic Doom maps and provide readers with links to where they can download them. It is my sincere hope that both newcomers to the game and experienced players alike might discover here some enjoyable Dooming experiences that they might otherwise have overlooked. My next post, focusing on maps created by the authors who had their works included in the famous id Software release THE MASTER LEVELS is already in the works, but as it turns out that's well over 50 maps to review so it has taken a bit longer than I had planned to actually finish the post. I hope to make it available to you within the next few days.


Until then, thank you for reading and for helping to keep this classic game alive.

7 comments:

  1. Umm, ouch. Some of those comments hurt my head >.< I haven't delved into the world of classic Doom for quite some time, thus the Oblige program is completely foreign to me. That said, if Oblige is a random map generator, how the heck can anyone find overt similarites between the results from its usage, and something you built on you own?

    I think some of the people that commented have since moved on to the Nexus...

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  2. @DRUULER:

    That's a question I've asked as well. In my forum thread (or was it the thread for the map review?) I challenged the nay-sayers to get that program to produce one of these maps, but of course they had no intelligent reply.

    But as I said (though I admit that I might have indulged my ego just a bit here) that really wasn't the point. I just wanted some kind of public evidence that I know at least a little bit concerning what I'm talking about as opposed to just being someone who decided to type up a blog. I really do love the game.

    And if you think these comments were bad and the Nexus has it's share of jerks, sometime try browsing the Doomworld Forums or the comments left on some of the other files in the Archives. The Doom community has more than its fair share.

    Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read the blog and leave a comment!

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  3. It takes a person of integrity to refrain from editing out the negative posts when transferring them to her blog ... I'm talking about you here Herculine. I recall reading these same comments some time back when you first posted about this blog at Nexus and I followed a couple of the offered links. At the time I questioned how they could be accurate, considering the person I'd seen in Nexus posts. Thank you for your openness and honesty (ya ... I'm in your corner). Looking forward to your next entries.

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  4. @Striker:

    Thanks for the compliment.
    I'm about 90% finished working on my next post regarding the authors of the Master Levels; I still need to take some screenshots from the CABAL series and finish a review for that; hopefully I'll get it posted some time this weekend.

    After that I plan to delve into some works that might be a bit more obscure... and hopefully I'll get good enough at this that perhaps some of my readers will feel inspired to actually dust off the old game.

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  5. Y'know, reading these comments (the ones you quoted in the post) never ceases to piss me off.

    Granted, I haven't played your maps (we all know how warped my perceptions of FPS are these days; I just can't get into a... more basic game like DOOM); but I also know you didn't copy and paste anything, and that you're a dutiful and hardworking modder, who is willing to bust her ass way more than is necessary to attempt to help players.

    It annoys me that no matter what kind of mod you put out, or for what game, there's always some little douche who can't do what you do; but is willing to post over and over again, trying to tell you how to do what you do, better.

    I still say fuck 'em. If they don't like your maps, it's their loss.

    Then again, I also accept and admit that two years and change of openly modding on the Nexus sites has probably made me a bitter and unforgiving individual. Er, more-so than I was before, anyway.

    Sorry... ranting again.

    I'm um... sure your review will be really spiffy when you get it done?

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  6. @Nos:

    As always, thanks for the support.

    I think I'm past being "butt-hurt" by it all, though. Now I just no longer feel that such people are worth the time and effort that I would put into any project.

    This blog isn't for them, either. It's for people like me who just really enjoy playing the game. They're the ones who I hope get something out of it.

    ReplyDelete