https://i.imgur.com/YVFE3Os.png
https://i.imgur.com/bIFNXsw.png
https://i.imgur.com/DyYr76n.png

There's a leak in this map. 

Congrats on your first release!

You've got a solid progression and a sense of encounter setups. The platforming bits work well, too.

Encounter notes:
Take note of places where the player is equipped to engage enemies in unfair ways (ways you did not intend, usually where the enemy has no clear way of retaliating or returning fire effectively). There were two specific spots where I remember cheesing the enemies, one was an Ogre behind bars, and the other was against the Vores in the last room. The last room was a pretty good setup, but the Vores had minimal room to move and not enough distance to launch many projectiles before I was able to overwhelm them with grenades, using crates as cover.

Brushwork notes:
Check how your doors appear from both sides, when open and closed. The door into the final room caused z-fighting, due to having one of its faces in the same space as the walls of that room. There are other little things like this... you may be able to see me looking at such things in the demo below. These are small issues, though, and should be easy to spot as you continue mapping.

Congrats again on your first release!

Demo of my run (normal difficulty):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10q69jx_jAslooP-Vm3ptwHlVFSbi36Ti/view?usp=sharing 

Thank you for playing! I just watched the demo.

Hah you definitely have a much more safe (smart) playstyle than myself. I usually jump all round the map whereas you were a bit smarter about staying back.

I'm wondering: In the first room with the armor pickup when you enter, I was hoping you would have stayed in the room and not backed out to take out the knight. How do you suppose I could have enticed you to stay in the combat room (hypothetical, I know)?. I'm thinking I should have had the player enter the room from the bottom so the player doesn't have the advantage of being above the monsters at the start.

Also, thanks for pointing out the brushwork issues. I'm gonna work on that for my next map. 

That's a great question. There are several factors in that spot that I take in to make a split-second decision.

The Alert sound: deathknight already grunted as soon as he was aware of my presence, so I know he's nearby even before I see him. (This is somewhat controllable with the "Ambush" flag on the entity, which says 'Stay Silent and Don't Move until the player is in your line of sight'.)

The weapon/armor placement. You've got bait already there, which is good. Having something to dash in and grab is generally the tried-and-true way to motivate specific player navigation. However, the deathknight was alredy active and I took a hit without being able to reach the super shotgun, which was my real point of interest.

Monster Health: The other most significant piece of this decision was knowledge of deathknight health. Just too much HP to drop him with the basic shotgun on that little walkway, without losing a bunch of health. That situation mandated I drop back into the previous room so I'd have time to complete the kill without losing health. The other option is to jump into the room, but that means facing a unknown number of other mobs that might be waiting. I chose the safe path.

The idea of having the player enter the lower part of the room first is a good instinct-definitely something to try out.

You could also try spawning/revealing a monster behind the player as soon as they step out onto the walkway... thereby threatening the path backward (and possibly motivating a drop into the room below).

You can try using the ambush flag on enemies to keep them in place until the player is close by.

Sometimes, it can be fun to keep all the monsters in the room behind doors until the player reaches a specific place in the room. Most experienced players will feel this coming, however. Using a mix of visible monsters and revealed/spawned monsters provides stages to the encounter that be quite pleasing.

Another thing to do is look at encounters in maps that you really enjoyed, and think about what order you saw and were able to engage combat with the various enemies in it.

Encounter design is a deep well, but it seems like you're asking good question and taking note of important things. Keep on exploring, I'm sure you'll find good solutions as you go along. 

here are some demos
skill 2 first play and a speedrun
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/dfl_flood_ankh.dem

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/dfl_flood_ankh_22s.dem 

map is leaked. Its written in .log file too. When you fly noclip above the map and see that map is black = noclip. luks like many leaks. When you going out from water (where the pillars are) on the steps, there is a ramp at the very top - - very annoying - you have to jump over it. Need place clip there or another stair. Items in dark water close to super nailgun is better make like a secret. If you have colorful lights on map - need place in .zip archive .lit file for it. Map luks interested, some places interesting to find and cover. but too many monsters is ambushing and killing in its back ). main problem - - learn to fix leaks 

map is black = noclip ... i mean = leak.
GJ in this interesting and not easy hobby - mapping 

Thanks! I definitely need to fix leaks better!

Thanks for the demos Ankh. It's very cool to see a speed run and see how rocket jumping can compromise some areas which were not intended as play areas :D 

Here's a demo. Great work on your first map. You'll get through the technical stuff soon enough but you have some good gameplay execution already. I had fun and that's a big win already. Keep mapping! 

DragonsForLunch , sorry - i'm curious - did you try fix leak(s) in map? 

http://quaketastic.com/files/demos/dfl_flood_cocerello.zip

Congratulations on the first release and congratulations on controlling yourself and not making a huge map that will take forever to map as the first one.

It was a nice experience and pretty solid for a first map, as there was no glaring issues on it. The map is simple but has good progression save for the silver key door is usually seen after the key itself but that is very minor. The lighting is decent even though maybe the sunlight is too bright and the faces of some brushes completely dark where they shouldn't, secrets were well placed and were coherent in the way to find them. It was also a good touch to use the room with the ogre behind bars as a side room to open later.

Only issues i could point are some unaligned textures, like the red glass one and the top of box you can see me checking and pointing to in the demo, most rooms where you need to draw the player in to avoid him sniping the enemies like Rhoq told you about, the use of enemies in the lower part of the NG room, that ramp Xlarve talked about save if it is on purpose so the player cannot retreat easily, and the placement and number of armour items.