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dobu gabu maru

The DWmegawad Club Plays: CC4 (Starting JENESIS Oct. 1st!)

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Just tackled map 25, a solid doom experience in the old school sense. I especially liked the music, very foreboding.

Some tough battles in here, but enough room to get out of trouble. One thing i did have problems with was the arena fight with a whole load of arch viles. Luckily I had the bfg by that point, it took me a few deaths to figure out you could run back into the entrance to the courtyard and sit in relative safety while everything outside killed each other. Oh that reminded me, there was a cyber demon at the bottom of some stairs earlier on whos missiles couldn't actually reach you, not sure if that was intentional or not. Now I think about it this map was a pretty linear affair, I guess the battles were beefy enough to make me forget about that.

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Map26: Im going to pretty much echo what cannonball said, really nice looking map but far too easy and far too much ammo. No difficult fights anywhere and a abundance of ammo makes this kinda boring, visuals are nice though.

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Map24
The abandoned/damaged base architecture - especially the blasted urban landscape with the Cyberdemon - was the highlight of this map. It was very well realised, with some great architecture. I agree with the earlier poster that the yellow key room was a bit of a disappointment.

I think the level would have been better if the yellow key area, and caverns section had come before the cyberdemon section, allowing that to be your last memory of the level, but that quibble aside, this was a great looking level with some pretty good fights.

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Map27: Quite a spiritual successor to the original Vulcana from Whispers of Satan, indeed. That cyber and archvile group being teleported away at the start made me realize that I would definitely be facing those guys later. The rest of the level is very familiar in set-up, right down to the whole pillar pathway over a vast chasm of lava.

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Map25
More old-school feel here, with various subsections featuring a different visual theme and a-more-than-sufficiency of "do X, release monsters" moments. These were all pretty clearly sign-posted though, so the inevitable monster closets and teleport traps weren't unfair.

I'm less enthused by scores of heavy monsters than other posters, but it was pretty fun to mow down hordes of revenants with the BFG.

The AVs in the marble courtyard gave me trouble, since I once again found zero secrets, but things after that were mostly plain sailing, with a lot of monsters I could simply sprint past.


Map26
Nice looking level. Manages to vary the visual theme while still feeling like it's all connected. Good work on that front. Also had some interesting environments in which to do battle.

Definitely a little easier than the levels preceding it, but a breather every now and then is not a bad thing.

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Map 27 - Vulcana 2
Well here is part 2 of whispers of Satan 2 :P
This map looks again excellent set in a mix of hellish caverns and red marble buildings. It's really easy on the eye.
Only problem here is the fact that Paul h as literally vomited out lost souls everywhere. A huge number of the monsters in this map are aerial attackers. Which I suppose might be the only way to go in some areas. I also noticed a lack of armour which made playing the level at any kind of reasonable pace hard to do.
To put it in perspective, I have not even finished the map. I ragequit after getting the blue key, Bad luck with spectre plus, why is there a crusher after grabbing the blue key??? You have to face a pair of revenants with no armour and less than 100 health, so you either take hits or get crushed, argh!!!!!
Sorry this map is not my cup of tea.

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Map27: Hated this map, most of the map is really easy and then it gets extremely frustrating to play when coming to the cave with lost souls. This is the biggest problem with this map, a gazillion lost souls doesnt make for hard gameplay or fun gameplay. This map is surely made with mouselook in mind, i guess with mouselook it would have been a more fun experience. I guess the visuals are nice.

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map 27: vulcana 2. possibly my favorite map in the wad.

absolutely awesome atmosphere. love the subtly creepy music and the sound of AVs nearly everywhere. Very nice visuals, very fluent gameplay. The giant cavernous area is kind of annoying with the horde of flying enemies to take out, but overall this map is a blast to play through.

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I'm glad Vulcana 2 frustrated you all with those Lost Souls coming from all directions. I aim to make all my maps in difficulty comparable to id's levels, maybe a bit more difficult. That will never change. The aim was to make a haunting, atmospheric level with many surprises.

I am long out of ideas for mapping ... so do not expect many more maps from me for a while (probably not until cchest5). Lotsa other things in life now. But still playing Doom.

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Map 26 - I really liked the look of this map, lots of creepy corridors and some interesting fights - particularly the outdoor section. The secrets were easy to find for a change - I actually like easy to find secrets as wall humping everywhere gives me motion sickness. I don't remember dying at all, in fact I don't think my health dropped below 50. I notice people saying it was too easy, I did feel like the whole map was building up to a fight that never happened. I never had to pull out my bfg, and didn't even use my plasma rifle that much. Still, a lovely looking map.

Map 27 - I'm guessing this is the sequel to the last map, the battles are a bit tougher here and the layout more varied as we delve into the cavernous depths of hell. The music in both these maps adds a nice eiree flavour. This one had quite an awkward cyberdemon fight, until I realised i could run back out the room and pick him off through the entrance door he couldn't get through. Arch viles were nicely/nastily placed i thought. One thing about both these maps is that they do tend to lead you by the nose from A to B to C, but there is lovely scenery along the way. Lots of secrets, I only stumbled on one and never found a weapon that I wasn't handed right at the start. I was running out of ammo in places, having to fight lost souls with a rocket launcher is kind of hairy.

Edit: I see people weren't keen on the lost souls - I have to say I don't see many maps that use lost souls much (without pain elementals) and I thought it made an interesting change. Gave me a chance to exercise my matador skills.

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UnholyMessias, there's something you liked of this project?
No, because at the posts i've read about your game vision (Just my map and now pcorf map) is all about "oh boy this is teh worst level ever i don't like it all FFFFFFUUUUU" negative comments...

Just for knownledge...

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walter confalonieri said:

UnholyMessias, there's something you liked of this project?
No, because at the posts i've read about your game vision (Just my map and now pcorf map) is all about "oh boy this is teh worst level ever i don't like it all FFFFFFUUUUU" negative comments...

Just for knownledge...


Mad that i gave your map a bad review I see ;), learn to take criticism in a good way and dont try to complain. Read through all my comments and youll see i liked pretty much every map except yours, pcorfs and phobus. Thats 23 of 27 maps which were good so far which is quite a good ratio. And maps 28,29 and 30 are all awesome so maybe you should look at what other people are doing better than you?

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One thing I have learned about mapping from doing this megawad club is that someone will always hate your map, but as long as someone else likes your map it doesn't matter.

People have quite a variety of tastes and play-styles, so you will never make a map that appeals to everyone.

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Map 28 - Crucifix held close
Over 400 monsters, highest tier weapon found, rocket launcher, well this is going to be a long slog.
The map mostly works on plenty of small monsters with some nasty traps aimed to be most suited to plasma weapons, except, well there isn't any (unless they are secret bound). This makes the map tough from pistol start and even playing consecutively, I could pretty much say I don't get much of a head start (little plasma after vulcana 2 and health and armour situation close to pistol start).
The map is beautiful but I would have liked it if the author had traded the gameplay for some heavier firepower in both weapon and enemy department. Still all in all it is a really good map.
Just a note back to Map27, it's visually stunning and I guess the area of greatest hate there's little room to create any other gameplay and others liked it. I might have been harsh with my first response to the level as I died in the same place a dozen times :P
After looking at the thread and noted an argument about Map 23, I stated back then the map was good if unspectacular. Different authors like different level design and the gameplay put into it. I am really happy that all the levels didn't turn out to be an average of styles of all people which would make for a pretty dull experience. That authors were still allowed to express themselves in their mapping despite the obvious mass of critique and tweaking the maps would have gone through during the past few years so for that I am really impressed, no level has made me really mad yet :)

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Map28: Even having taken the bfg with me, it still did take a bit of time for me to get through this map. The layout wasn't too bad, though the fights still gave me a bit of a hard time, particularly towards the end. In the case of the cyberdemon, I said "screw it" and just made a break for the exit. Next up is pretty much the hardest map in the entire megawad, but nowhere near as hard as "For We Are Many" from CC3 and not quite as epic in scale as "The Citadel at the Edge of Eternity" from CC1. All the same, that next map's still very difficult.

Edit: I also love how appropriate Map28's song was to the title of the map.

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pcorf said:

I am long out of ideas for mapping ... so do not expect many more maps from me for a while But still playing Doom.


Same....

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Aleaver said:

Same....


(Offtopic) Holy shit, it's Andy Leaver! I recently played through your/Pablo Dictter's/my levels in No Hope For Life; bit of a blast from the past. I'm also known as Jay Townsend or 'Jayextee' (though I forgot my old account's password, whoops), so hi. ;)

I'd be on-topic, but I left CC4 a bit long since playing again. MAP28, really? Damn, I'd have to complete 20 levels to catch up, and that's without the secrets.

Damn.

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map 28: Crucifix Held Close

Kind of cheesy to name a map after the soundtrack, but it's an amazing map so I'll let that go.

Starts off pretty easy, but after the red key door things start to heat up and some of the traps are pretty harsh. Depending on what order you tackle the rooms in you can end up pretty ammo starved (was playing from pistol start, ended up zerking down an AV, aw yeah). But a big reason for that was all the pain elementals, hot damn they can cause a clusterfuck pretty quick and eat up a ton of ammo.

things I especially liked:
- some areas were very pretty, in particular the RL room
- the 'arena' at the end was awesome. with only chaingun and ssg it got pretty tight, and I think the walls lower at the perfect time

minor grievances:
- flying enemies in big empty spaces (I think I've complained about that for the past 3 maps now, so I guess it's just a personal annoyance). This map reignited my hatred for PEs
- the blue key trap isn't very threatening, mostly tedious
- the cyber at the end would have been a lot less boring if the player had the plasma rifle, although that would definitely trivialize the arena encounter, so idk

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My Radeon drivers updated themselves this week, causing my GZDoom performance to start lagging and acting up, and when I was saving in MAP24, GZDoom had a hissy fit and crashed and when I went to open my save file it had disappeared! It's pissed me off so much that I couldn't be fucked continuing on. I did play this originally in the beta phase and can safely say that the remaining levels are all kinds of kick arse. I don't think there has been a single level that I haven't really liked, but when you play a mapset of quality such as this, there will be a few that don't stack up against each other, but would still stand out anywhere else. Cut a long story short, I've dropped out of this one. The short amount of time I have for Dooming at the moment is going on mapping, but thumbs up to everyone who are still carrying on the megawad club tradition! (It's been almost 2 months, that's enough to call it tradition, yes? ;)

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map 28 was a blast, caslevania music really set the pace for running and gunning. Lots of monsters, tricky traps, gorgeous locations, and a great finale. Weaponry got a bit sparse in places but there was enough ammo i think, those pain elementals made my heart sink though - was there 3 or 4 of them at one point?

Secrets I found none, there were so many wall details that looked like switches I gave up searching.

Seeing as the end is approaching I was wondering how this compares to the other community chests - I started playing the first one ages ago but I got to one map early on that was so bad I quit the whole wad. Would people recommend checking them out?

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Processingcontrol said:

Whose going to make CC5 Map17 then? :O


Haha IDK...Map 17 always seems to be the map I make for CC..And CC 5 would be the first CC I wouldn't be in if I don't map for it this time around..We'll see..

ComicMischief said:

(Offtopic) Holy shit, it's Andy Leaver! I recently played through your/Pablo Dictter's/my levels in No Hope For Life; bit of a blast from the past. I'm also known as Jay Townsend or 'Jayextee' (though I forgot my old account's password, whoops), so hi. ;)


hey dude! How have you been? Playing NHFL again I see..

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Map27
A gorgeous looking map, with detailed lava caverns being the major feature. Very well executed in that regard.

Some of the platform sections seemed like they'd been designed with mouselook in mind. I had to resort to the automap to confirm the next place I was supposed to jump.

Gameplay ... meh. It may have been Paul's intent to have lost souls swarming from everywhere, but it was pretty easy to back into defensible positions and then just hammer a way at the tedious bullet sponges until they went away. Of course, it's hard to use lost souls in a way that isn't either tedious or frustrating, and of the two, tedious is better.

As far as the other fights went, we had a neutered cyber (I could shoot him, but he couldn't shoot me), and the overused 'Archvile teleports on top of you' gimmick. If I never see another level where this happens at the exit switch, I'll be a happy Doomer.

On the plus side, the red key area was a pretty nice set piece fight, with dangers coming from multiple angles as you entered.

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The Green Herring said:

You mean MAP27, right? ;)


Of course. That's what I wrote, after all.

*whistles innocently*

:)

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Map 29: Spiritual Holocaust

My favorite map in the wad, and another all-time favorite level for me. Love the extremely brutal traps, music+atmosphere+decorations are all perfect, I could play an entire megawad of maps like this.

The hardest part in my opinion is the (pistol) start, bum rushing to get some ssg ammo with multiple AVs and revenants all over the place was very dangerous, but extremely fun. The cave area was especially memorable, although the AV jump megasphere got replaced with a soul sphere?? bah, it costs me more health to get over there and kill the revs than the item replenishes.

After getting the yellow key that tele trap was pretty nasty, died a bunch of times, but I probably could've approached it better. The red and blue key traps seemed like they should have been harder but they gave me a lot less trouble for some reason.

I'm also particularly fond of the winding path that revisits the starting areas. After getting the red key the ssg hallway scared the piss out of me, was not expecting that to open up at all.

Ammo balance felt pretty good, though I think it would have been better to give the player less rockets, less plasma, more shells. I ended up with a surplus of RL/BFG ammo that made the last few parts of the map significantly less challenging.

Ok I'm done raving, but yeah, loved the map. great penultimate level for a quality megawad.

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I'll pretty much agree with Ribbiks on Map29 (running out of things of my own to say at this point), though I still prefer the penultimate levels of CC1 and CC3 as amongst my favorites of the Community Chest series.

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UnholyMessias said:

Mad that i gave your map a bad review I see ;), learn to take criticism in a good way and dont try to complain. Read through all my comments and youll see i liked pretty much every map except yours, pcorfs and phobus. Thats 23 of 27 maps which were good so far which is quite a good ratio. And maps 28,29 and 30 are all awesome so maybe you should look at what other people are doing better than you?


Sorry, i don't want to be bother...

That's a thing that sure i do, actually with the mapping on the "Secret Santa" project i just learned few new tricks that until now i don't known...



One thing I have learned about mapping from doing this megawad club is that someone will always hate your map, but as long as someone else likes your map it doesn't matter.

People have quite a variety of tastes and play-styles, so you will never make a map that appeals to everyone.


Actually is a thing valid in everything in life, not only Doom, and is a thing i known from a very long time...

The beautiful thing of the world is it's variety, isn't? Otherwise, it could be very boring....

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gun_psycho said:

Map27: Quite a spiritual successor to the original Vulcana from Whispers of Satan, indeed. That cyber and archvile group being teleported away at the start made me realize that I would definitely be facing those guys later. The rest of the level is very familiar in set-up, right down to the whole pillar pathway over a vast chasm of lava.


The vast lava cave was inspired by a level in Deus Vult 2. Same with the bigger, original Vulcana in WOS. But the cavern in Vulcana 2 is much more vast. Its a mind-blowing sight when you reach the bottom where the Spider is and look back up.

You can beat the map without mouselook. I did all my testing without mouselook, just watch your step and save often. Its not an easy level, especially the huge cavern but cool heads prevail. Your choice if you prefer to use mouselook.

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map 29 was everything i hoped for and expected, some full on carnage in beautiful surroundings. That start from pistol was indeed rather harsh, though after a few attempts i managed to leg it and find a weapon. I quite like those manic starts.

I found myself saving before every button press or new room after a while, the traps were quite relentless in their regularity. Never had any problems with health or ammo though. The layout was so sprawling that i'm sure I missed some bits, I definitely missed a few monsters somewhere, and didnt get many secrets. Epic stuff.

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