What are you playing now?

Obsidian said:

Currently playing KDiZDCommunity Is Falling 3. Anyone else notice that the "Nightmare!" setting is now the "Nick Baker!" setting? Priceless. X-D

Finished playing through this again myself the other week. I forgot how bloody HUGE the .WAD is, and some levels still kick my arse. Why can't all jokewads be this good?

Also, I don't usually play with skins, but there's a certain kick to be had from running around blasting noobs and trolls when your character actually looks like your avatar.

Currently, I'm hooked on Reelism. I've been playing it for weeks now and I'm sure I still haven't seen everything.

I am playing The Plutonia Experiment and the difficulty is EXTREMELY HARD. I am currently playing Level 6 but I am enjoying myself way too much that I end up dying over and over again. Brutal Doom makes almost every wad more exciting.

Also Scal, any idea what the hell this is? X-D

All I can work out is that it seems to have something to do with Japanese tuner cars. I may be completely wrong, though.

EDIT: I was: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/za-warudowryyyyy

Finished AV. The slaughter was not as bad as I thought, though still kind of challenging. Very good all-around, like ridiculously good. Play it.

Played Void too. As a single map it blows all of Beyond Reality out of the water. Also very cool and worth your time if you like something less monster-oriented.

Also gave Reelism a ton of runs. Pretty fun. Some of the maps feel a little bare but the backbone is in the crazy combinations, which must have more, more, MORE!

kmxexii said:

Played Void too. As a single map it blows all of Beyond Reality out of the water. Also very cool and worth your time if you like something less monster-oriented.

Played this again recently. Still my favorite Zdoom wad ever.

Finally finished Memento Mori. Jens Nielsen's "City of the Unavenged" (MAP28) definitely felt like the highlight of the whole thing and was probably the only time in Episode 3 that I was really enjoying my time with MM. While the other maps weren't terrible or even bad (although "Cesspool" was surprisingly poor), I just didn't like the layout/fights for the majority of them so I can't say I think highly of the megawad. MAP29 in particular is a good example of what I mean--it's a spacious, detailed and winding map with a lot of cool nooks and crannies, but I was bored out of my mind going through it. I know it was meant for co-op which would undoubtedly make it more fun, but as a single player experience, Memento Mori just doesn't satisfy my Doom needs. It's one of those instances where if I was part of the community in '96 it would've been a blast, but it's tough to put myself in that era when I've played so many other megawads that were subjectively "better" in my eyes.

Next up, as recommended by most, is Survive in Hell.

Played Back to the Fire, a single GZDoom / Skulltag / Zandronum level. I dug the colored lighting but it was a pretty easy level with mostly incidental (i.e. monster here, a few monsters there) combat. The lighting helped to disguise how hodgepodge some of the room texturing was. I had fun, though. It would be a great early map in a larger episode / megaWAD.

Played Demonfear. It was very fun; Adam Windsor is great at setting up nasty pistol starts, if nothing else. It was great reading along with the story .TXT. It's not very substantial but it's quick and awesome. The boss shooter is pretty novel, too, though it doesn't have a chance to shine. The pillars you use to rocket the brain have the monsters spawn on them, so it adds a more manageable timing element with the telefrags.

Also played HeDRoX. Short, super-detailed level. Most of it looked pretty though it got a bit much at times. It felt kind of flat and the fights past the first few weren't very interesting, particularly the stuff off the "+"-shaped hallway, which was a poor finale.

HeDRoX 2 was much larger and less cluttered. Unfortunately it feels about as flat as the original HeDRoX. I didn't like how spaced out it felt; enemies feel few and far between in spite of it fielding 500+ monsters and except for a few fights easy to slaughter. That three-pack fight with all the imps in the horseshoe area was pretty fun, though. It has a slaughterfest finale as a MAP02 but you can easily get infighting to do most of your work for you.

Now playing Twilight Warrior.

kmxexii said:

Played Void too. As a single map it blows all of Beyond Reality out of the water. Also very cool and worth your time if you like something less monster-oriented.

One of my alltime favourite wads. I remember playing Alice for the first time later on, and being blown away by the parts I recognised from Void.

About a third of the way through Survive in Hell and I'm enjoying it so far. I didn't realize that it's basically a compilation of short, unrelated maps, so I switched my playstyle to pistol start to accommodate for it. I really do get the feeling that it's slaughter-lite, since many of the big battles seem intimidating at first but there's plenty of health and ammo to go around. Ammo has been pretty well balanced for me, draining me of the gun I use most but always replenishing my munitions if I push on.

Also, the lack of blood when shooting revenants is deeply disturbing to me, as it makes them seem more durable than their plasma-filled brethren.

Apart from Hadephobia, I recently played "Diet 32 in 24." It was pretty mediocre, to be honest, with a lot of extremely simplistic layouts and banal fights, together with a decidedly tacky aesthetic and incongruous detailing. There were a couple of maps that were better than the others, though, and I suppose it's not meet to expect too much from a pack of tiny speedmaps.

Heh, wanted to act smartass on SF2011 /idgames page, but it seems that my wall of text's too big for that and I don't want to throw anything away. Though I still wanna share some thoughts on this without bumping its obsolete thread, so I'll just put it here. For those who wanna read some.


To make things clear [once and for all]: Danne's and Phml's stuff is truly impressive, some of GoS's maps are cool, and I can also recall at least 1 map from gggmork, as well as from GRB that are good enough. Others range from ugly and bland to something more or less playable, though fun in those still may be questionable. ToD's stuff in particular haven't impressed me at all, huge borefest with overabundance of hordes and his traditional abstract gigantomaniacal designs that don't appeal to me in any way, so I also say no to these. BUT - considering the facts that this is a) somewhat experimental and even unique .wad (can you recall more full 32-level mapsets consisting of slaughtermaps only?), b) it's designed for challenge-seekers (and I am) and c) it holds some true slaughtergems - it deserves a good mention. Of course SF2012 is a definite improvement on all accounts, but things have to start from some point anyway.

Played Hell to Pay up to Map 19 from Map 12. E2 starts off awesome, you spend a few levels slaughtering EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING on a spaceship you snuck onboard, have an amazing battle in outerspace, then take a shuttle to a secret facility which then self destructs, with an ACTUAL ten minute timer. All in vanilla constraints and in 1996. The next two levels were great, with an exploding collapsing bridge to end a level, and a huge pair of planet-killing missiles, one of which you fail to prevent the launch of. Then 18 comes along and says fuck you, almost literally. Some cool parts like a tunnel that lights up as you walk it, and a simulated underground area, but the broken crane that I needed to IDCLIP out of, the SIX keys guarded by a cyberdemon....AND A TIMED MEGASPHERE PUZZLE THAT HAS A MOCKING MESSAGE FROM THE DEVELOPERS IF YOU FAIL (and you will), brought the whole level down and resulted in me turning it off at map 19.

EDIT: Oh and a winding tunnel made out of goddamn door textures made me want to vomit. I'm usually really forgiving with bland texturing or design, but that...*gag*

Demonologist said:

Heh, wanted to act smartass on SF2011 /idgames page, but it seems that my wall of text's too big for that and I don't want to throw anything away. Though I still wanna share some thoughts on this without bumping its obsolete thread, so I'll just put it here. For those who wanna read some.


To make things clear [once and for all]: Danne's and Phml's stuff is truly impressive, some of GoS's maps are cool, and I can also recall at least 1 map from gggmork, as well as from GRB that are good enough. Others range from ugly and bland to something more or less playable, though fun in those still may be questionable. ToD's stuff in particular haven't impressed me at all, huge borefest with overabundance of hordes and his traditional abstract gigantomaniacal designs that don't appeal to me in any way, so I also say no to these. BUT - considering the facts that this is a) somewhat experimental and even unique .wad (can you recall more full 32-level mapsets consisting of slaughtermaps only?), b) it's designed for challenge-seekers (and I am) and c) it holds some true slaughtergems - it deserves a good mention. Of course SF2012 is a definite improvement on all accounts, but things have to start from some point anyway.

I think that it's great that the people that really appreciate slaughtermaps can come together and make their own megaWADs. I don't like when they dump on other projects for not aspiring to their tastes, but it's only natural that they want to play more stuff that they truly enjoy, and it's what they like, so who am I to argue?

Finished Twilight Warrior. It was an interesting divergence from ordinary Doom gameplay but not something I'm going to come back to. I can see how it would be way more fun with multiplayer.

CHORD3 was very brutal and very fun. I think CHORDG was a more comfortable play but I will have a greater remembrance of the fights in Sailor's final level.

Currently playing Herian 2. It's better than the original Herian but it's still Herian under the hood, just significantly toned down.

Ragnor said:

Played Hell to Pay up to Map 19 from Map 12. E2 starts off awesome, you spend a few levels slaughtering EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING on a spaceship you snuck onboard, have an amazing battle in outerspace, then take a shuttle to a secret facility which then self destructs, with an ACTUAL ten minute timer. All in vanilla constraints and in 1996. The next two levels were great, with an exploding collapsing bridge to end a level, and a huge pair of planet-killing missiles, one of which you fail to prevent the launch of. Then 18 comes along and says fuck you, almost literally. Some cool parts like a tunnel that lights up as you walk it, and a simulated underground area, but the broken crane that I needed to IDCLIP out of, the SIX keys guarded by a cyberdemon....AND A TIMED MEGASPHERE PUZZLE THAT HAS A MOCKING MESSAGE FROM THE DEVELOPERS IF YOU FAIL (and you will), brought the whole level down and resulted in me turning it off at map 19.

EDIT: Oh and a winding tunnel made out of goddamn door textures made me want to vomit. I'm usually really forgiving with bland texturing or design, but that...*gag*

It would be a shame to write the rest of the mapset off at MAP18. I don't even remember the Cyberdemon, but I do remember the broken crane and megasphere. Granted, if you're not a fan of dickery, you might fume at MAP28, where they drop you on top of an invisibility sphere for a Cyberdemon fight.

kmxexii said:

who am I to argue?

And you want to? Feel free to do so then, I won't get mad at you. I also don't like separating slaughterfans from others, to me it looks like we're plagued or something. I assure you we're not. And dumping on other projects is a completely subjective feature that doesn't define group as a whole. Each 'camp' has its zealots, but we're all fans of the same game, aren't we?

Demonologist said:

And you want to? Feel free to do so then, I won't get mad at you. I also don't like separating slaughterfans from others, to me it looks like we're plagued or something. I assure you we're not. And dumping on other projects is a completely subjective feature that doesn't define group as a whole. Each 'camp' has its zealots, but we're all fans of the same game, aren't we?

I know. I've just seen some slogging from outspoken people I've come to associate with that style of gameplay that seems denigrating to others. It's not mutually exclusive, of course. Plenty of people on these forums are more than willing to dump on slaughtermaps, and playing or participating in Slaughterfest or anything slaughterish doesn't mean it's the only thing you can enjoy. It probably has even less to do with slaughtermaps, now that I think about it.

kmxexii said:

Currently playing Herian 2. It's better than the original Herian but it's still Herian under the hood, just significantly toned down.

It would be a shame to write the rest of the mapset off at MAP18. I don't even remember the Cyberdemon, but I do remember the broken crane and megasphere. Granted, if you're not a fan of dickery, you might fume at MAP28, where they drop you on top of an invisibility sphere for a Cyberdemon fight.

Thought you'd reply to that, I had your HTP review in the background the whole time, I went back to it after every episode to see your thoughts on the levels. You didn't like the megasphere either :p

I'm going to finish it, I just needed a rest from it after that level.

You going to write reviews for the Herians? One of them was my first D2 megawad, I don't remember which.

Playing Coffee Break for the DMWC and Mapgame for my own thread.

Ragnor said:

Thought you'd reply to that, I had your HTP review in the background the whole time, I went back to it after every episode to see your thoughts on the levels. You didn't like the megasphere either :p

I'm going to finish it, I just needed a rest from it after that level.

You going to write reviews for the Herians? One of them was my first D2 megawad, I don't remember which.

Herian is finished and in the review queue (semi-scheduled updates). Herian 2 is currently on the block. I'm a little less than halfway done.

Started going through reverie again, its a real classic, I only played it once before but each map seems to be burned in my memory.

And for a bit of contrast I'm also finally working my way through slaughterfest 2012. Bastard hard bastard.

mouldy said:

I'm also finally working my way through slaughterfest 2012.

Same, heh. Map15 is the hardest of them all so far, I wonder what comes next then.

Finished Survive in Hell. I had a mostly positive opinion on it overall as there were a lot of neat ideas thrown in. The mapset feels like a big grab-bag of challenges as the difficulty curve is all over the place, sometimes varying widely from room to room (I found the start of each map probably to be the most challenging part). While there were neat small scuffles I liked, there were also some aggravating lowpoints like MAP23, filled to the brim with obnoxious baddies everywhere that felt straining to get through, similar to Holy Hell. The entire hell episode looked nice, but I didn't find it to play as well as I'd hope.

The new enemies were an interesting addition, although the dark red noble and final boss were the only really interesting ones as the cyberdemon jr. and lost soul bastard weren’t quite used enough to get the player familiar with their style. JC did an excellent job putting everything together in the end; I think it’d be more interesting with less small/speed maps (like the MAP16-20 stretch), but kudos to him for putting together an interesting series of maps that show off some of his good ideas and compiling abilities. It must be a huge sign of relief to finally have a full megawad under your belt.

Finished Herian2. It's better than Herian in just about every way but still Herian. There is a lot of moon logic to plough through. The cruise ship was the most frustrating part for me, except for a door in the boss map that broke on my playthrough, which must have been dumb luck.

Not sure what I'm doing next. Hadephobia and KMEGA are on the chopping block. Well, the entire works of Kurt Kesler, including KMEGA.

Been laying off of doom builder to get more in touch with doom. I poked around slaughterfest 2012 trying to find levels that appealed to me enough to replay a few times. I liked phml's and darkreavers maps the most I think. I also played some ksutra map17, vile flesh map12, hr2 map07 and map08, and some of malcolm sailor's maps. I finished my dooming spree on a good note and retreated to uac ultra 2 to see how much contrast there are between these maps, seeing as though uu2 wasn't as well received as I would have guessed.

Unfortunately I happened to have the most fun out of everything on my own maps. I was able to move very wildly and freely without getting clipped by details, the light monsters are easy to kill and you can pull some really daring moves without enduring a shit ton of damage, so I was able to play really aggressively and blast through the first episode with ease, and take detours into secret areas for added monster slaying if I felt like it.

I'm thinking the second episode will have to be a bit more unforgiving of mistakes. A more dense population of bigger and deadlier monsters is in order. I'm toying around with the idea of placing big piles of monsters in locations where they can see or hear the player, and shaping the rooms in such a way that the monsters sort of meander and collect into the areas that I want them to defend, such as a monster closet waiting to open up when the player snatches an important weapon or a key. That way it will kind of simulate the heavy supershotgunning fun of uac ultra 1, without having monsters respawn right in your face when you play it in nightmare.

The position of many of the monsters is going to require a lot of forethought, but I aim to do the best I can to make the maps play just as well both modes without compromising any one of the skill levels.

Just played Stronghold, not the Torm mapset, a level designed in the 90's! I always play this level a few days before exams, it's almost like a ritual. :P

It has a great theme, foreboding evil atmosphere, intense non linear gameplay that is on the forefront where you can accomplish objectives in your own pace, complimented by a fantastic totally non linear layout that is fun to explore... and it has cleanly cut old school style architecture that is aesthetically pleasing without pretentious distracting detail... modern mappers (myself included) can take level design tips from levels like these.

This is probably my favorite single level wad of the 90's, it just has everything that embodies what I enjoy about (the good side of) classic user made DooM levels while still feeling as as if it's part of the Id DooM universe.

Played KZDOOM1. It was a pretty cool level. Not sure I liked the new zombie dynamics as something I'd stick with for the rest of Doom but the scripted stuff was neat. Looking forward to the rest of it.

Hadephobia was a nice break. Some cool stuff worth checking out. I wasn't a fan of the more cramped levels but it was a nice outing. Interested in seeing more from all the authors.

Played ENTRY (aka Morgana). Neat little '94ish level. Nothing extravagant.

Also played Steve Rescoe's Skyewood. Trippy, goofy. Primitive in some aspects but a nice blast from the past.

Now playing Joe Zona's Real TC.

Was playing through Double Impact recently as filler material, I liked the first 3 levels so much that I've decided to stream an entire playthrough for the DWMegawad thread that I wasn't going to cover originally, so I can see what the rest of the levels are like.

There's just something interesting about how they designed the levels thus far for me....

Got some progress in Doom 64 and resumed Hell to Pay today

I FINALLY BEAT HECTIC LEGITIMATELY.

Hell to Pay's map 19, 20, 21 and 22 are all epic as hell. A shame Map 18 pissed me off so much that I quit to take a break for a while. Map 19, Demon Chow, has some amazing pseudo machinery like a giant meat blender, and you got to love the giant gun turrets. Map 20 is inside a giant computer and is incredibly detailed, and has one hell of a great ending, where you get in a ship and take off for the next level (and episode). Map 20, Planet Hell, is just jaw dropping, theres things like giant skeletons lieing around, and a living cybernetic demon that you have to enter through its gnashing mouth, then drop into its acid filled stomach. I actually died to this guy, his eyelid crushed me to death. Yes, his eyelid! Map 22, Vile Temple was a great challenge and even had a most devious use of the ghost monster bug. Its usually imps or zombies that show up as demons, this level had a boss fight against a ghost revenant!

The infamous "trials of hell" are up next, which I'm not looking forward to.

Currently playing through 10sector.wad, It's suprisingly good considering the maps assumingly only use ten sectors each although some of them don't seem that way, also some of the maps felt like a mix between Doom 2 and Wolf 3D style.

Avoozl said:

Currently playing through 10sector.wad, It's suprisingly good considering the maps assumingly only use ten sectors each although some of them don't seem that way, also some of the maps felt like a mix between Doom 2 and Wolf 3D style.

Pity some of the levels don't work well and I had to use cheats like "no clip" in some areas.