Swift Death (challenging megawad) [on /idgames]

Hello!

I present you Swift Death, an extremly hard megawad.
Compatible for Boom (complevel 9), The concept is that you have to survive monsters, which attack you as soon as you begin. This megawad is adapted for speedrunners.
In fact, certains maps ending in a few seconds, there are some trick :) Fortunately, I created a reasonable difficulty for novice players. (Toilet Break - "IMTYTD", and "Soft Event" - HNTR).
This maps was created in speedmapping sessions. That's why they are not very detailed.
Ah, Memfis and JCD are guest mappers of this megawad, I thanks them for their maps :)

Screenies?
http://i39.servimg.com/u/f39/18/93/74/01/screen16.png

http://i39.servimg.com/u/f39/18/93/74/01/screen17.png

http://i39.servimg.com/u/f39/18/93/74/01/screen18.png

Recapitulation :

- Extremly hard maps
- Die and retry spree
- No BFG (excepted map30)
- Small maps (excepted map12, map29 and map32)
- DM compatible
- Doom2 textures stock only (excepted GFX, skies, and final boss)

A story?
You are the puppet of Itanimulli. A powerful Evil God, which take pleasure to torture you. He sends you in different worlds since the eternity. But you keep at the bottom of you a hope, to leave this hell. Because you know that in every death, you are so close to the exit.

A link?
>> Swift Death - /idgames link

MAP BONUS : >> MAP01 remasterised (First Sequence)

If you're somehow unable or unwilling to cope with extreme challenges, I suggest you try a lower skill setting :)

Enjoy!

I'm neither a speedrunner nor an expert player, so I'm out of your target audience. Anyway, I'm enjoying the wad so far (being 5 maps in) thanks to well implemented difficulty settings (I'm on HNTR). I like the level designs and functional challenges a lot in this wad, and I'll use it as a good "practicing" wad - I can raise the difficulty eventually when I think I can handle it. So, thanks for making this. :)

Wow, excellent. Not that I'll be playing this on hard (had a little skim through it and he's not kidding folks), but medium seems to be more my level. Up to map07 and enjoying so far, though I have a feeling I might have to drop down a notch eventually.

haha holy shit, 2014 is the year of the speedmap

kmxexii said:

haha holy shit, 2014 is the year of the speedmap

Yeah, like 2011 was the year of the megawad, and 2013 the year of vanilla mapping. ;)

So I beat map01 in UV. I think the key to beating these maps is some professional infighting + berserk skills.

Edit: This would be great for a hilarious survival competition.

Been playing through this on HMP continuous, really cool set of maps. Bastard hard, I don't even want to think about some of them from pistol start, although I get the feeling on a lot of them that carrying weapons over from the previous maps destroys the intention quite a bit. Having said that, I found myself struggling for ammo by the end of map29, and saved myself into an impossible situation with viles resurrecting more than I could deal with, so my game ended there for now.

I really like how compact and mechanical a lot of these maps are, and short too. The only map that became a pain in the arse was map12, where dealing with all the pain elementals turned into a bit of a repetitive drag. And of course I haven't seen map30 or the secret maps, I'll have to save them for another day on an easier setting I think.

Great stuff

mouldy said:

Been playing through this on HMP continuous, really cool set of maps. Bastard hard, I don't even want to think about some of them from pistol start, although I get the feeling on a lot of them that carrying weapons over from the previous maps destroys the intention quite a bit. Having said that, I found myself struggling for ammo by the end of map29, and saved myself into an impossible situation with viles resurrecting more than I could deal with, so my game ended there for now.

Wow, you played the wad till the end, I'm surprised :o. Actually, played every map in pistol start is a real challenge. I'm not sure that there is enough ammunition in map29, because I have never succeeded to finish it. x)

mouldy said:

I really like how compact and mechanical a lot of these maps are, and short too. The only map that became a pain in the arse was map12, where dealing with all the pain elementals turned into a bit of a repetitive drag. And of course I haven't seen map30 or the secret maps, I'll have to save them for another day on an easier setting I think.

Great stuff

Map12 is also the map which I like least in the pack. It's rather long to finish it, and it's necessary to repeat the same action, 4 times. I'm not also a fan of Pain Elemental use. This monster is generally not very far in the megawad.

Map30 is as high as the other maps, I think that it's an excellent map to conclude the wad :)

Ha, I thought I was the only one that got a perverse enjoyment out of sticking people into a box and killing them over and over again. I randomly warped to MAP22 and yup, definitely seems hard. If I have some extra time after Going Down I may give it a whirl.

Hey, I like being unreasonably mean to my players too :(

Seriously though, once you put in DM starts I'll try to get some people together for an FFA testing session. Looks cool otherwise.

I like these kind of maps. I did fda for 1-8 so far and exited each time (after many deaths, but at least I didn't rage quit like I usually do, probably because they're short so restarting doesn't lose too much progress). I'm not good at fda so someone else could do better ones to watch probably.
http://speedy.sh/8rS8s/sd-beta2-upto8-ggg.zip

Yeah, that's the attraction of this wad for me: dying is not that painful when each failed attempt is usually one minute long or less. Playing it reminds me of IWBTG a bit lol.

That's an important level design characteristic that's worth mentioning. Particularly in regards to hard maps of varying sizes.

Some mappers who make very large maps are very cruel in making traps with no preceding warnings or hints or anything, and when survived, are concluded with no rewards. This can be acceptable practice if the map is inherently short, so the lost progress of dying doesn't set the player back too much. This was a playing factor in the success (IMO) of one of my earliest map projects -- Motornerve, that used short deathmatch layouts as the monster-infested single player murderfest. It didn't matter if you died, because if you did, it was usually within a few steps of your starting area.

This is also what makes a map like Dead Simple pretty fun and reckless. The same strategies that make MAP07 great couldn't be employed effectively in a map like MAP24, the Chasm or MAP27, Monster Condo, unless they were right in the very beginning. If your map has a pretty timely length, it's important to refrain from "fuck you revenants" and bullshit chaingunner traps in unconventional places with no hints. Using a visually communicating "lure" is an increasingly important quality as the map grows in length.

Keycards and Skullkeys are the obvious culprits. New weapons work, as well as Powerups, or large ammo stashes. Another hint is intentional suspense, like darkness and/or scarcity of monsters. All of these things communicate to the player that these gifts come with strings attached.

It's also important to reward the player for "winning" at the trap, by surviving and killing everything, usually with some ammunition for the newly acquired weapon, or some health, armor, etc. The player's encounter with an unprecedented trap shouldn't also be a huge expense to his health and ammo should he not complete it with perfect accuracy and evasion of damage.

I haven't played this wad yet, as the self-proclaimed "Challenging megawad" sounds pretty intimidating to me, especially after having played a number of wads that were often reviewed as hard for the unfair reasons I described above, but the comments in this thread sound pretty redeeming, so I'll play it shortly :)

It's a interesting analysis. In the case of SD, weapons, items, and monsters are placed in a strategic way, I think about to the player route, and choices that he will take. Generally, The player will replay the map, as much as he wishes it, until that he finds a good, or the best strategy. I don't think that maps are frustrating, however, I have a doubt on the quantity of ammunition.

Don't be frightened by the title of the theard, you can try :) And if the challenge is too hard for you, you can try a lower skill setting :)

These are getting very hard/tricky/great. 22 seems eaxt level or harder but I don't know a proper route so not sure how hard it really is. I beat 21 and before (the last few not in fda), on 22 isn't there 2 chaingunners in pits on the south side, and if you cross from east to west they don't pop up and thus block you = bug? I only got there from iddqding it.

There I beat 1-22 so far, the 'notFDA' ones are 1st exits not fda, the rest are:
http://speedy.sh/v4tEQ/sd-beta2-upTo22-ggg.zip

You can see the chaingunner/shotgunguy pit bug at the end of the 22 notfda demo. They don't pop up until you get to the other side.

Yes, it's a bug, I forgotten to add an action line to the yellow skull.

Curiously, this map is my favorite about the megawad x) Map23 was for a long time my favorite map (It was the third map which was created). But map22 dethrones it, maybe because traps are often unpredictable.

I believe that map29 lack ammunitions in certain areas. Ammunitions are generally placed in danger zones, but it's necessary to kill certain monsters to reach them. Some archevile seems to me too frustrating, I have to rectify that.

And thanks for your FDA :) I am going to take the time to look that.

Sounds like the sort of Doom 2 maps I like to make, I'll play this when I next need my Doom fix. :)

Yay Franckfrag maps!

Oh and with this out the way maybe it means we can get back to work on Necromantic Thirst? :P

Beat all up to 28 so far:
http://speedy.sh/U22dK/sd-beta2-to28-ggg.zip
and found 2 bugs I think:
27-you can see in the demo a bug where near the exit you get stuck with no way out, at the top of the lift, a sector raises trapping you (unless i did something wrong)
28-an arachnotron in the corner is dormant because it doesn't have enough roaming room to wake up and shoot

Map 30 has one of the most awesome looking doom skies I've seen

Some of these were very hellish to beat

I played up until map06 until I realized I was playing on complevel 2 and none of the switch or lift textures worked. I guess I can't give you my true FDAs. I like it so far for reckless playing. Speed running seems like it might be a chore though considering how short the maps are and the peak of the difficulty is almost always at the very beginning (so trying to get the best speed is mostly going to be a lot of dying and rebooting the program in rapid succession at the very beginning until you get the speed you want) I was surprised, for instance, how few of the keycard/skullkey pickups didn't activate any traps.

its by no means bad though! Im having a lot of fun with it. :)

So pleased you enjoyed yourself, 40oz :)

DeathevokatioN:
Yay Franckfrag maps!

Oh and with this out the way maybe it means we can get back to work on Necromantic Thirst? :P

Yeah, that's a burden less to live with :) I have effectively to concentrate me on NT now. However, I'm going to enter in a busy year by studies.

dickin around with this and having a lot of fun. i loved your levels in the original 3HA, they had their own particular verve and it seems like you took them to their logical end with this set.

Those skies are purely fabulous? Yeah they are. I'm going to check this out on the weekend. :) Thanks for sharing this

Okay, I feel like an idiot, but how do I beat MAP01? The blue skull doesn't seem to stay lowered long enough to get to it.

Salt-Man Z said:

Okay, I feel like an idiot, but how do I beat MAP01? The blue skull doesn't seem to stay lowered long enough to get to it.

its all about timing, you have to activate the first platform, then hit the switch that lowers the blue skull

alternatively, death slide into the exit room

kmxexii said:

its all about timing, you have to activate the first platform, then hit the switch that lowers the blue skull

Hrm, that's what I'd been trying, but apparently my straferun-fu is weak? Or maybe it's just harder for a keyboarder?

Many maps need to realize straff40 to jump between platforms.
Thus, I think that it's too hard for a keyboarder.

What's left to get this onto idgames?

Marcaek said:

What's left to get this onto idgames?

I am to encroach in other projects, that's why I went away from SD. But I consider worked well above today. I wish to take out at first one beta3, and later, a final release.