Doom (1994), Level Development, and the RAMP 2023 Community Project [2/?]
Immediately upon finishing the room, most of the design philosophies of the map became clear to me. Angled platforms and stairs, steep verticality, the map layout looping back upon itself to guide the player where they need to go - everything was there for me to toy with. With my goalpost clearly set in stone, I started building another room. Then another. Then a couple more.
That's not to say the goalpost wasn't moving during this - around this time in the project's discord server, I had discussed the idea of adding optional, normally locked armories throughout the map, which could be open via switches off the intended path. The people there thought it was a good idea, so I'd put in some effort in incorporating those.
At some point, I’d built enough that I was happy with uploading an unfinished version to RAMP. This was a forgivable decision, since the site had an option to mark a map as work in progress, and other people were already doing something the same thing. I compiled everything into one .WAD file, even went through the effort of composing a music track for the map, and after some deliberation, uploaded the map and claimed the MAP21 slot.
I didn't catch any breath after that, and pretty much immediately went back to building more of the rooms out. It'd already been a few days since I'd started the map by this point, but that didn't deter me. Either the prospect of being part of a community project, or the admittedly faraway but still ever-present deadline, had me dead-set on making this map.
Over the course of the next week or so, the map exponentially grew in complexity, until eventually, there were enough rooms for me to be happy with the progress that was made. I'll admit, I wasn't sure what I was expecting to make when walking into the project, but something of this density had never crossed my mind.
It was a marvel to me. Nothing I'd put together before this reached this point. In retrospect, there are one or two things I did miss out on - some areas could've been more populated, but I didn't want to spend too much time on this map and risk not finishing it. So, on June 7th, with the finished product at the ready, I took to the website once again and re-uploaded the map, unticking the WIP flag.
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