Jayextee

I think the skill floor has raised considerably in general, not just the DOOM community, since 1993. If not due to the popularity of the FPS genre in general (which definitely helps) but because arrow keys and no strafing is most-definitely not the default for most players, and a mouse/keyboard setup for high performance is very common. I'm going to argue that new DOOMers are definitely playing at a high level from the start than those in 1993 did.

Not exactly a hidden gem, but I feel like Coincident's missing from your list there.

As a four-legged cybernetic monstrosity, she already isn't. Eight legs is a basic characteristic of arachnida, so I'm taking the 'spider' part of the nomenclature as loosely as it deserves. So anyway. She should fly.

As a general rule, avoid anything with fullscreen flickering if you can; which I'd say means to use flickering lights sparingly and in small areas -- not entire swathes of open space, if you can help it. But from what I understand, you can never absolutely 100% guarantee that something in a videogame is completely safe for epileptics. Thus, 'use sparingly' is going to be to your own better judgement, really. "No flickering" is the best possible outcome, but whether or not that's to your map's detriment is going to be entirely your call.

Excellent reply and feedback @galileo31dos01 - thank you so much! I'll have a look at fixing most of what you've pointed out probably after the festive holidays, but I'll address a couple of points now: Actually I did! In some maps the only change I made was "one extra box of rockets per Baron of Hell in the map" -- I'm actually really tired of seeing complaints about "shotgunning barons" in Ultimate DOOM maps when sometimes later I've played the thing myself and, well, it takes like a couple of seconds to fire five rockets at the things and many UD mapsets provide more than enough; indeed, The Becoming did originally. So I thought, huh, why not add even more in case the player's wasted them and that's the reason they're trying to shotgun the bruisers. I even applied that to my fully-"balanced" E3 maps after-the-fact. as well. Save for E3M1, for reasons. My thoughts exactly. I just saw a post in the DWMC Realm of Chaos 25th Anniversary thread that's berating a map for having an E1M8-esque ending and therefore being a pain to UV-MAX and it's like, are people not aware that's a completely elective challenge category? And this is the way I see it, a thing it's nice to support where you can for players who wish to come back to a WAD for more challenge, but absolutely shouldn't be seen as mandatory. I myself made some small adjustments to maps to allow hitherto-inaccessible monsters to be killed (main example being the upper imps in E3M6's giant wall) but otherwise, well, I'm not a UV-MAXer myself. I didn't test for it. What else can I do? <shrugs> And, finally: Thank you for this. A thing I've been quite aware of is how single-author megaWADs can occasionally get a bit stale and samey as the author's quirks start to repeat themselves, and I've tried my best to avoid this as much as I can; and so I intentionally went for a mix of puzzles, platforming, combat-heavy maps, linear maps, sandbox maps, unfair and trollish traps, predictable feelgood "traps" (y'know, where the player can feel smart for 'calling it' or whatever -- IMO it's good to throw some of these in here and there for gamefeel reasons), etc etc. "Rich and complete" was, I guess, the subconscious end goal. I love to hear it! Again, thanks! :)

Actually, I have a serious answer here. SMM should fly. Sure, it would require different sprite art. But the DOOM bestiary doesn't have any flying hitscanners and is short on airborne enemy types in general. Also I solved one of the SMM's size issues right there; she can move pretty much anywhere she can fit now.

Upgrade to 9000HP and put her on a moving platform. Boosh.

This reminds me of how in one Nex Credo map (MAP05, if memory serves?) I put an armour in a slime pit that absolutely needed to be SR40'd over; because it lowered and became inescapable otherwise. It was also close to a missable secret which, although I don't think is trollish myself, does seem to upset some people.

A bit of both, really. I'll often design an encounter with an intended way and make sure there's a good liberal amount of supplies for it; removing some for UV and maybe adding more armour for ITYTD/HNTR. I often don't touch the monsters until I've played the encounter for myself; boosting it or reigning-in as needed, my usual approach being that there are more distractions/annoyances off to the sides or whatever for UV and certain enemies either 'downgraded' (e.g. shotgunners replaced with pistol guys) or removed entirely for ITYTD/HNTR. I tweak a lot based on my HMP playthroughs, and if an encounter's cool and all but a little much then I'll flag the main offenders as UV-only; I don't consider this 'removing them for HMP', more like I'm making HMP the experience I intend with UV being, kinda, the 'rejected for being too hard' version of the same fight. Of course, there are other changes I'd make as I'm initially-designing; such as moving keycards to easier/harder locations as per skill level, or unflagging pistol-start weapons in starting rooms for UV (and making players on that setting pretty much have to wrestle their starting weapon from the hands of an enemy, etc). No one approach is best IMO.

I've done some things in my WADs over the years that could be considered trollish; but in my eyes it's really just experimentation, because I personally doubt everything has been tried yet, just most things. Off the top of my head: Sinister Intention never giving the player the chaingun, forcing some pistol play The Becoming E2M8 put a few noses out of joint with its incredibly punishing suicide walkway surrounding the cyberdemon fight apparently Bleedthrough's untagged secrets I admit, my intent isn't to troll but to provide some hopefully unique experiences in my maps. For better or worse; not every experiment's a banger, and I accept that. It's why they're experiments. It's good to see what works and what doesn't IMO.

Ohhhhhh ffs, I know exactly why this has happened. Somebody, and that somebody was me, carelessly autoaligned the BROWN96 somewhere that's adjoined to this thing here. It's happened before and, ugh, clearly it happened again when I wasn't looking. Thanks for picking up on this (and the meme, got a good laugh outta me <3 ).

I had thought about this, and have had the suggestion to make the player's starting sector tagged secret so that it'll at least be a 100% at the end to satisfy the UV-MAXers. I may yet make this change, since I've a lot of respect for the speedrunning community in general -- it's a way to capitulate whilst still holding true to the part of my vision (yeah, yeah, you can use the word 'pretentious' all you like) that doesn't want to incentivise wallhumping et al. Wondering if this one change can rescue the entire WAD from its fate of being labelled 'painfully unfun' though? ;)

That's it, ladies and gentlemen; theybies and gentlethem, and anybody not conforming to any of those schools of thought. The secret to good gameplay revealed, and it's a pat on the back for discovering areas off the beaten path. To think of all the time mappers spend waste on challenging combat and flowing layouts when they could just make sure their secrets are tagged!

Ooof, nice catch there. It would be one of the older maps there, part of the earlier The Becoming -- I don't think I was quite as paranoid about either HOM (easily fixed, I can stand to shave a couple 2s lines from that area) or VPO at that point.

Chasm: The Rift, or DOOM II MAP24? Because I've not played the former and the latter is much more narrow walkway-focused than my own DOOM platforming designs. Otherwise, thank you! ;) I feel incredibly complimented by this, thank you so much. I'm going to try and nutshell my complex feelings on the matter, but I've recently come to the opinion that the seemingly-mandatory secret search a lot of players engage in on their first playthrough (of games in general, not just DOOM) detracts somewhat from the experience; something is lost in doing so. So I unmarked them all to disincentivise this somewhat. I was also somewhat incensed by this post from stewboy on the matter -- and indeed, whilst watching test playthroughs of Bleedthrough or YouTuber Let's Plays of an earlier indie game I'd made, it got a little frustrating to see players locate and see the exit, and then turn back and start digging into every visible nook and cranny looking for secrets. This bit in particular caught my attention: I just don't want to obligate players to ruin the experience that way. If they find secrets along the way, awesome. Sometimes they help with the combat -- a thing players hunting for them after-the-fact won't actually get the benefit from. Eh, so much for the nutshelling... ;)