Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
dobu gabu maru

The DWmegawad Club plays: Interception (mmm, vanilla compatible!)

Recommended Posts

I'm a fan of Scythe but have only completed the later maps in co-op so I wouldn't mind getting to know this classic a little more. I am also quite partial to a bit of Doom (1) so I might give ADO a try too. Put a tick next to Scythe from me but I do not really mind either way...


19 - Castle Grounds by Memfis

Add me to the Memfis fanclub. I have noted he has been in the habit of individually releasing maps and immediately is assaulted with megawad demands and now I can see why. Castle Grounds is another strong contender for map of the megawad.

As the title suggests the level seems to be set within the confines of hellish castle ruins. It feels like a good companion to MAP18 but otherwise is another variation on the underground city theme, which has left this episode so thematically inconsistent. Put on it's own though this map has great atmosphere and a sense of place. Like another favourite of mine The Cataclysm the openness and layout encouraging revisiting of areas allow you to see the map from varying angles which really lets you get to know it.

Memfis' thing placement is exceptional - especially his devious arrangements of his arch viles, which can quickly cause your game to spiral out of control. The deliberateness of most encounters give you a glimpse of the author's intention and that leaves you feeling like you're in good hands. Guiltily, I did not reciprocate. Starting with an almost full arsenal, it was apparent I was breaking the author's carefully planned choreography but pistol starting even in HMP might have been beyond my limited abilities.


20 - Beta Tower by Matt534Dog

Better Tower, I'd call it. Finding it as I did an improvement over it's rather ugly MAP12 sister. Still, it's an odd contrast to the earlier tower, which was bigger, tougher and with grander ambitions - despite being the E2 opener rather than the headline act that this level serves as.

The start contains an absolute abundance of medikits and is disconcertingly bare of dangerous opposition. It picks up with the yellow key in what I took to be the dingy bowels of the tower. The manc down there caused me some frights as I tried to find him in the dark before he found me. Outside of this it's an bloodless journey. Had the map ended in an unexpected massacre this would have been quite the trick but, like MAP11, this does not feel like the finale the episode deserves.

Still, it's completely inoffensive and I quite liked the look of it. Some of the areas like the high imp/former human windows and the PE room towards the end were both id-like and it was an all round classic sight that I am increasingly appreciating in Chocolate Doom.

Share this post


Link to post

Map26 - Blood Siege by Pottus
Very large map, still to complete
Not sure what's going on in the latter stages of the map, seem to be getting some serious engine related problems, fireballs going through solid objects and radiation suits which still allow you to take floor damage at regular intervals.
FIght wise, this map seems a little better than 24, but there are some pretty cryptic things going on, like the cross of the coffin you need to lower, I spent 15 minutes trying to proceed until I spotted this. The red key in the bloodfall, you can just about get away with that as it's a consistent theme throughout.
I played consecutively, but would ask is it possible to survive the fight after the red key door. Two archviles, revenants, hellknights with very little cover, you have to wait for the bars to lower and then your biggest weapon is plasma gun. I could only escape using bfg, but no signs of getting that from pistol start before then, so a little mythed on how to survive it from pistol start (i probably suck though :P)

Share this post


Link to post

24 - Abysmal Affliction by Pottus

Bloody hell that was a bit epic, took me 48 minutes - though that doesnt account for the many times I died, most of which was at the beginning. Being a poor pistol starter I was running around the place hunting for something bigger than a standard shotgun/chaingun to shoot all this big nasties that ended up following me around. I cleared half the map before realising there was an SSG on a pole that could simply be summoned down. Thereafter a great deal of SSG blasting took place, the noise of that gun started wearing a bit thin after a while but eventually the bigger weapons arrived, and there were still plenty of bad guys left to mow down. I can't think of anything I didn't really like about this map, it was definitely a save-every-5 minutes job, or eventually a save-before-every-switch once the big ambushes started - but I have nothing against that kind of adventure. Getting the bfg by dashing behind the cyber was a bit of a coin toss, I definitely didn't have the ammo to waste on him though. There was a set of bars I could squeeze through that i'm not sure I was meant to (near the double crusher trap), though I couldn't actually get anywhere beyond the next room. Also a glitch in the sky here:


This was a great map. It kicked my arse but was never totally unfair, and had an amazing variety of places to explore. The design did a good job of helping me to remember the layout, though the computer map definitely helped me out a few times. I was going to play another map tonight but think I will need a rest after this one. Great music too.

Share this post


Link to post

cannonball said:
I played consecutively, but would ask is it possible to survive the fight after the red key door. Two archviles, revenants, hellknights with very little cover, you have to wait for the bars to lower and then your biggest weapon is plasma gun. I could only escape using bfg, but no signs of getting that from pistol start before then, so a little mythed on how to survive it from pistol start

Yes, it is possible, even though (as you correctly point out) one doesn't have the BFG yet. I survived it, but obviously not the first time through. That trap will easily kill you the first time unless you have lots of health and psychic powers / cat reflexes.

Share this post


Link to post

MAP26
-Another large map.
-Revenant cages!
-There's many moments that are hard to forget in this map. The first being the mad dash through the deathblood that ends up making you surrounded in a narrow deathblood corridor by 2 Barons.
-Did I mention the deathblood that was everywhere?
-Then there was the cyber-coffin of doom
-And then there were the many rooms where you had to wait for the infinite teleport lift to finally drop.
-Good midi here again.

Did a preview of the rest of the maps. Some of them are big, so I'm looking forward to going through them.

Also, my vote's for 2002ADO. I'm guessing we'd be playing the 10 year anniversary edition?

Share this post


Link to post

MAP20: Neat introduction to hell. Phobosdeimos threw down quite an interesting layout with patches of damaging floors and a lot of low ceilings. I liked a lot of the encounters, although it didn't feel too balanced. Ended somewhat suddenly.

MAP21: Strange level with many switches and a confusing layout. MAP20 was better IMO, I have nothing else to say other than that.

Share this post


Link to post

Map 26 -- Blood Siege - 103% kills / 83% secrets
Another grandiose and challenging offering from Pottus. Like 'Abyssmal Affliction', this is another fine-looking map on a large scale, using a lot more red (red rocks, red cobblestones, and of course blood) and a lot less ashy rock than its sibling. As is often true of Hell themes, just what is being depicted is largely up to the imagination; I imagined the central structure, where play begins and where the exiting teleporter is found, to be a ritual gate to the inner reaches of the Hell-dimension, possessed of such magical potency that it requires a great quantity of dark energies to function, said energy being supplied by the confluence of several rivers of the blood of the ancient damned (the deathblood, as BlackFish calls it, found throughout the map). As an aesthetic aside, though, I felt that the reused music track here didn't fit the map very well.

Much like map 24, the immediate proceedings are rather pitiless for the pistol-starter, as again the supplies that are immediately accessible are woefully insufficient to combat the considerable forces lined up against you at the start. And again, much like map 24, much of the challenge on an initial experience with the map consists of exploring the early parts, dying a gruesome--but educative--death, and eventually figuring out a good itinerary for developing a solid foothoold in the early going, from which point you are led on a generally linear tour of some pitched arena-based battles for keys and, indirectly, weapons. Again, I feel that most of these big brawls were less difficult than the map's outset, and pretty manageable for one reason or another--for example, the fight in the area overlooked by the huge bleeding cross, where the blue skull can be had, can readily become a case of chokepoint management as long as you're able to dispose of the early-appearing arch-vile in a timely fashion (although the fight in the caged, pillared area immediately preceding it gets pretty nasty). On the whole, I felt that this map was less difficult than map 24 (or at least I died a lot less), as the scheme of things in the early going--e. g. don't try to take everything in the main area on at first/hit the face-switches on the cold iron slabs to open up weapon chambers in the central structure--seemed a lot more intuitive to me this time....and I also got a lot of help from the first cyberdemon, who disposed of a lot of the monsters populating/repopulating that central area over the course of several revisits, until he finally crapped out at some point during the baron/HK wave.

This brings me to why I'd say that this is a more satisfying map overall than 24 was (though I did quite like the overwhelming early-game puzzle aspect of that one)--it has a stronger feeling of progression. The theme of hitting face switches in the side areas to unlock new implements of destruction (and demonic reinforcements) in the central area helped to tie these areas--some of which are large enough to be small challenge maps in their own right--together and make them feel like a more coherent experience, as opposed to a disjointed handful of big brawls. Similarly, I always like to see an author get a lot of mileage in the action department out of a big, roomy central hub like the pentagram/blood chamber, and Pottus does just that by reseeding it with progressively stronger waves of monsters as more weapons are unlocked, capped off with the viles who'll likely end up resurrecting a bunch of the many corpses in the area during the finale. Finally, I think the overall pacing is better, with some solid breather battles to contrast with the key arena fights and the ongoing ruckus in the pentagram chamber, like the quite easy yet satisfying battle against the imp hordes in the blood-duct. Overall, while I don't feel that every fight was as interesting as it might have optimally been, as a whole I think the map works very well, by dint of the aforementioned progression style. And of course, as was also the case with 24, I liked the difficulty spike here. Felt invigorating.

Cannonball: The 'leaky' rad suit is one of the weird little featurebugs of the original Doom engine--20% damage floor, like the pernicious blood in the main chamber, will occasionally penetrate the protection of the suit. In Eternity, the port I most often use, this doesn't happen at a set interval--sometimes you can stand on the floor for quite some time and suffer no ill effects, while it's also possible (though unlikely) that you might take two hits in rapid succession. Other ports, and maybe even the original engine, might handle that a bit differently (e.g. maybe in some cases it will happen at a regular interval)....not really sure about that. It's not something that's seen very often, since use of 20% damage floor in the capacity that it appears in this map is uncommon in a lot of WADs.

Share this post


Link to post

I play with pr-boom, this is the only level (specifically the blue key area) where this happens, it's not every once or so, this is once every 10 seconds in only this map has this problem, it's very annoying that you are fighting a tough battle for the blue key and you automatically lose half your health due to a bug, that fight given the armour and soulphere should leave you with a decent amount of armour left, yet the best I managed was about 9 armour (though you do get replenished after finishing of the imps in the blood duct). I have no real idea, maybe it's something to do with the size of the map or something which causes vanilla emulating engines struggle or something like that. Finished the map now, glad I left the invulnerability secret from the final ambush. Very useful.

Map27 - Wrecking Fist by Memfis + purist
Yet again an easier map compared to the last one. Has some nice fights, the cyber a nastily placed but not in an unfair way. Can't offer really any complaints. Looks good, plays good.

Share this post


Link to post

21 - Wrong Dimension by phobosdeimos1

A nice introduction to Hell. A series of irregular caverns linked by jagged corridors or teleports and defended by a modest number of mostly lower tier monsters.

The simplicity, brevity and lack of resistance are something that can be easily forgiven in an episode opener and there are nice touches. The false walls and damaging floors added an uncertainness to the place and I liked how the teleports were used. My only gripe was the similarity of the damaging floor textures to the surrounding none damaging ones. That said, there was not a lot of danger in the map and the unpredictability of safe places to stand had a charm about it.

There is not a lot to look at throughout but texture work stays mainly on the right side of tasteful and light levels compliment the atmosphere.

Share this post


Link to post

Map 27 -- Wrecking Fist
Small map with a strange title. Nothing to complain about in the visual design department. It looks like an installation built into hellish rocks. Difficulty is medium, it starts out pretty rough and there was a point about midway when I was down to 30 percent health and had to play a bit carefully. It gets easier towards the end though. I dealt with the Cyberdemon the safe way, shooting it through the window. The last room was a bit ho-hum but I guess you could spice it up by running through while the Cyberdemon is still alive. The BFG secret and following trap was quite clever, the two others obvious (I even "cheated" at the soulsphere and just pushed the button beside it directly instead of pushing the intended switch which lowers the lift there, then ran out into the corridor and accessed it). I was expecting a trap when going for the yellow key, but then I always expect traps (I ran away quickly in an earlier trap at the red key and was barely injured at all). Another fun little map, there was enough action to keep me interested and it plays well. --4/5

Share this post


Link to post
Kristian Ronge said:

Map 27 -- Wrecking Fist
Small map with a strange title.


I can sort of explain the title. Since this was a collaboration between Memfis and I "fist" is an amalgamation of the last three letters of our usernames. "Wrecking" is just a word to put in front that makes a cool phrase. The bezerk towards the end is a nod to the title. It's meant to imply "go on, punch the rest of 'em". But depending on how well you handle the cyb, AVs and PE you might have too much ammo to be encouraged into this.

22 - Bone Dread by Phobosdeimos1

Another decent PD1 map. His best three all betray his DTWiD experience in that they are not always necessarily flashy but they do have that classic feel that makes you think 'id'.

This one is a little longer and tougher than his previous but is still bereft of any real challenge. The damaging floors here are better defined than Wrong Dimension and you are occasionally caught on your toes but the cyb fight was completely negated by the invulnerability sphere and the AV is more mischievous than malevolent. The switch that requires a run across the ledge before the door closes sometimes annoy me (especially when failure results in return through damaging lava) but there's enough health to give you a few attempts and the run is not that hard.

The tone of the map is similar to the other Hellevel, perhaps a little deeper into the infernal core. I can't quite put my finger on what I like about the look of this author's maps - it clearly does not always work as MAP15 attests to - but there's a cleanness and simplicity to the look that I can really subscribe to.

I'd be quite satisfied to play another 8 maps like these to finish off the megawad.

Share this post


Link to post

MAP26 – BLOOD SIEGE

Another very large, very nice looking map. Gameplay was okay… at first I was having fun, but I’m not really a fan of the “trap the player in an arena while tons of monsters teleport in” thing. Also, the damaging blood floors just annoyed the piss outta me. 20% damage floors that run throughout the entire level? Blargh. The fact that the suits occasionally "leak" makes it even worse. On a less populated level, it would be an interesting challenge; on a level with this many monsters it's just annoying and makes the map frustrating. Also, the map doesn't look nearly as good when seen through green tint half the time...

I did like the concept of travelling to different parts of the map, hitting switches to progress (and unlocking parts of the "armory" inside the pentagram, each filled with a new monster), but unfortunately I didn't really figure that out until the second or third time. (I spent awhile wondering if the blue key did anything besides let me out of that area, which I don't think you can do without the switch anyways given the one-way drop down the blood waterfall). Also, my run was a little anti-climatic since I saved the cacodemon switch for last, followed by killing a bunch of pink demons. Meh.

Overall, good design, but I found the damaging blood really frustrating. Some of the fights weren't quite my thing either, but I did appreciate the difficulty. And it all looks very pretty...

(As an aside, one of the "armory" rooms in the pentagram had a HOM effect on the inside of the doors that drop down. One of the cell or the rocket rooms, I think)


MAP 27 – WRECKING FIST

Much different from the map before it - if you took out the Cyberdemon and put techbase textures on it, it could be a map from the first episode. Small scale, but fun to blast through, especially as a nice breather between the 500+ enemies in MAP26 and MAP28. The teleport and door trap at the start seemed very similar to MAP19's, so no surprise that Memfis had a hand in both maps.

The aesthetic has a good mix of old-school design (especially in terms of room shape, and abstract layout) with new-school appearance. It isn't anything memorable, but the gameplay is more important, and that shines. The secrets were perfect and had that good ol' Doom flavor ("this must do something" or "there must be a door here", etc)

Honestly I think the only thing I didn't like about this map was being forced into picking up the green armor at the start (I came into the map with 84 blue armor). That's a minor complaint, so bravo.

Share this post


Link to post

Map 27 -- Wrecking Fist - 104% kills / 100% secrets
This small, humble map contrasts with map 26 in much the same way that 25 did with 24. Apparently a collaboration between Memfis and Purist, aesthetically, it has all of the hallmarks of a Memfis map--assertive color contrast, constricted corridors contrasting with yards open to the sky, a very 'realistically' scaled sense of height variation, etc.--but I think I can sense Purist's influence in some of the thing placement and especially in the style of the secrets (which were entertaining, by the way, especially the two-part BFG secret), which do remind me at times of 'Panopticon' from the first episode (granted, that was a very different type of map from this one). Depicted is some kind of stone base positioned in a burning bloody morass....there's a lot of texture variation here for such a small level. It looks just fine, but it does kind of feel like it fell more in line with the theme of the second episode, somehow. There is little to complain about in the gameplay department, although from the name of the map I was expecting the berserk pack to play a much larger role. Combat takes place mostly in tight quarters or at point-blank range, apart from some revenants on small rocky islands in the lava lake near the yellow skull. I thought that the ammo balance was very well-judged, keeping the player's bandoliers nearly empty a lot of the time without the play ever feeling like it was entering the scavenger/survivalist realm, and the amount of cells being just right for safely killing the cyberdemon. As in Memfis' map 19, arch-viles were used well, with pretty much all of my excess kill score coming from the vile who teleports into the room on the other side of the bars in the BFG secret, right into a pile of corpses. None of this is terribly difficult, and most of the combat is very straightforward, though the cyberdemon area features some relatively narrow pathways and could be dangerous if you happened to drop down through the opening near the switch that unleashes him, as this "circuit" is only one-way in that direction, meaning that at some point you'd have to brush right past him (for my part, I just BFG double-tapped him out on the open part of the area). While the encounters aren't as memorable as some of the stuff from Memfis' map 19, this is still a quick, fun little map, that continues the third episode's theme of late of alternating a big, burly map with a relatively small, easygoing one.

One visual bug that can only be seen under particular circumstances: if you happen to be hit by an arch-vile's attack while standing on or near the lowered platform that has the rocket launcher on it (don't worry, I survived), you can be thrown up into the "ceiling" and see some HOM.

Share this post


Link to post

Map28 - my time in this wad is not going well. Completely stuck.
Sectors with action tags 31 and 39 can only be activated inside a certain corridor, they are the only methods of getting into that corridor which is the way to proceed. Meaning I am permanently trapped in a certain area of the map with no way out (backtracking is blocked too).
Sectors in question - sector 917, 918, 924, 925, 926
917 and 918 are lifts which can only be lowered by action tag 31 (linedefs 3981 and 3986) and sectors 924, 925 and 926 are opened by a switch (linedef 4016).
These linedefs are unreachable without cheats and I've pressed every switch I can in that area and checked doombuilder. Help please unless I've broken the map somehow

Share this post


Link to post

Push the switch with the candles, run out to where you fought the imps, zombiemen and revenants out by the lava, run left into the wooden corridor, run to the bottom until you reach the switch, push it and run into the exposed teleport. The switch you just pressed also lowers the thin metal bars on top of the stairs, but you need to *again* push the switch with the candles to open some side doors at the top of those stairs. Lastly, quickly run so you're standing on top of the lowered metal bars at the top of the stairs and into the exposed door openings. It had me stumped for a while, too. :-)

Share this post


Link to post

Ah ok, well that's cryptic, in fact the only cryptic part of the entire map. Well the combat was fun and varied for a long level. The difficulty no where near as high as pottus's maps. It was fun but the puzzle to get to the yellow key was annoying. The archvile section was fun but quite easy and the final part was yet again pretty easy. Took a rocket to the face and still left the final trap with over 100 health and armour with the megasphere to spare.
Oh well it was a fun ride in the end.

Share this post


Link to post

I'm only up to MAP23 but since people are playing MAP27 and I obviously know it well I'll leave some notes and then carry on in order...

27 - Wrecking Fist by Memfis & purist

I don't know why I only signed up for one map. It was probably due to commitments to Progressive Fiction. Whatever reason, I was quite keen on the opportunity to get re-involved after Memfis could not finish his map.

I was quite surprised at the amount of work Memfis had already done on the level. The bulk of the areas seen in the finished level were already present the unfinished .WAD sent to me, save for the subterranean area you drop into. Being keen on shorter maps and happy with the areas already present I decided restrict building new areas and instead worked on a mapflow and thing placement. Other than the last area I only remember adding a little bit to the blood pit and lava area architecturally.

Less was done in terms of thing placement and gameplay so DotW was spot on his assessment that aesthetically and layout wise is mainly memfis while thing placement and level flow is mainly me. I liked how open the map was so I made a conscious decision to allow access to as much as the level without needing keys as was feasible. This map ammo balance quite difficult especially because I was shooting for the player to be low by the time they reach the bezerk pack.

I wish I had made the bezerk more of a theme but most of the map was done by the time I came up with the title and I'm overall very satisfied. I hope Memfis thinks I did him justice. This was my first collaboration and gave me a healthy appreciation for Memfis' work.


23 - Bloody Castle by C30N9 / valkiriforce

This level looks great and is quite fun but suffers a little from symmetry and the major battles can fall flat if you use the opportunities provided to you to cheese them (as I couldn't resist doing).

The wood, metal and blood houses a brooding sullen atmosphere. The architecture is nice to look at and often serves a purpose is cover or means to progress, texturing is neat and detailing is bang on the standard that suits my taste. Lighting is pitched just right.

Highlights for me was the revenant blitz that feels manageable at first but starts to get out of control as they spill around the staircase and landed. The raising platforms also had a lot of promise but I broke this by saving in the room and when I reloaded my game the monsters had fallen back to sleep so did not warp.

The fight towards the end with the arachnatrons flanked by barons and revs could also be neutered by firing from the door way. Since you teleport into the room preceding this fight it may have made sense to drop the player straight into the action instead. Also, the arachnatrons in the pit was a pointless fight as it can't see you unless you make yourself purposely vulnerable.

If I had to guess I'd put the layout to C30N9 and the detailing to valkiriforce as it looks but does not play like a valkiriforce level.

Share this post


Link to post

I kind of figured Memfis was behind most of the architecture; it's very similar to map 19. I think your collaboration worked quite well, I had fun with that one! :-)

Map 28 -- Amongst the Ash
A large, gorgeous map, with a great title, set in wooden/marble temple grounds, which, had it been offered the Möller brothers when they were spearheading MM or MM2, would have been accepted with open arms. At the start you can wander off in one of two directions. Either you go west and visit the Arch-Vile realm (a fantastic side area where you are hunted by about two dozen Arch-Viles, in the same vein as Plutonia map 11 but this implementation is vastly superior!) to get the red key, which gives you the blue key once back at the starting area. You're juiced up pretty good for this but all that ammo dwindles down, as there's no extra ammo at all while fighting the viles.. a very cool touch and one that made my heart pound a bit extra as I was close to running out.

You can also go eastward and hunt for the yellow key. You need both the blue and yellow keys to access the last marble arena and the exit fight. The progression leading up to the yellow key is quite linear but it's not shoved in your face, rather you're kept very busy with some intricate sector work, cool traps and fights placed throughout your journey. The fights are consistently violent and the difficulty playing from scratch is medium/hard with several difficult fights here and there (there's an especially tough sequence around the BFG area where you're likely to be somewhat low on health and have only a few rockets and a bit of plasma and there are 5(!) Arch-Viles released in this area in various stages). It never feels unfair though, you can always pull through... and if you don't you want to play it all over again immediately. This is quite good stuff, so good in fact that it's hard to accurately describe the action; just like the best maps of MM(2), from which it clearly draws some inspiration, you're greeted with a continuous stream of solid fights, and delightfully cool sequences (blue key trap, Baron rocket trap, yellow key trap to name a few) which would make the Möllers proud. :-)

Ammo was very tight for me playing red key-blue key-yellow key in that order, until about the library (which is 85-90% into the map) but I always had (just) enough. The ending fight is superb: two Cybers in a grand arena followed by a monster swarm... save your BFG ammo and take out the Cybers with rockets! Very fun, but curiously, the finale is much easier to survive than the middle section.

I have some very minor gripes. For example the secrets (although very well-done, hidden superbly but still findable) didn't really contain much powerups or ammo, so I don't really see the point of them, other than that two of them look nice and let you explore new parts of the map. The switch puzzle at the BFG had me stumped for a while but not long enough to be frustrating. The Caco teleporters at the yellow key can be a bit slow in releasing the monsters so you have to wait for them to kill them all (happened in a second playthrough). It's also a liiiittle bit too long for my tastes, when I had survived the yellow key trap and begun making my way back I almost started looking at my watch. I don't know how this one plays if you do the yellow key area first, I'll have to try that next. One of the best maps of the WAD in my book. Bravo! --5/5

EDIT:

Map 29 -- Barbatos' Fortress
Yet another large one. The start is open terrain, and challenging -- you are supplied meager weaponry and a large assortment of monsters start firing at you from everywhere. The surroundings do lend themselves to infighting opportunities, which I took full advantage of. After this bloody start you find you way into a marble fortress and aside from some initial woes involving some nasty Arch-Viles, and a fun fight including the guest of honour (or Barbatos himself?) sitting at the dinner table, things generally calm down and you can start exploring the fortress and its surroundings a bit better. There are lots of places to explore and instead of overusing teleport traps the author has placed monsters lurking almost everywhere. The difficulty is about medium throughout with a few difficult fights thrown in here and there. One thing I found funny is that because of the lost soul limit I encountered a lot of PEs throughtout the map which were rendered completely helpless and I could save a bundle of ammo by punching them. Which turned out to be good, as ammo is rather tight if maxing, so do make sure you use the ample infighting opportunities to full effect... I left the map with about 10 rockets and a dozen shells left, and I generally did not let the AVs revive too much, punched out a lot of monsters (the PEs, and e.g. the HKs in the area overlooking the imp cliffs), and also tried for example to make the Cyber in the starting area kill off as much as possible for me. Two secrets, both good, not too tricky to spot, and the BFG one requires visiting a seemingly sort of empty wooden side area. The one landing you on the imp cliffs gave me some weird visual effects which I guess has to do with the sectors being placed high up and having sky ceilings. No biggie. Make sure to save some plasma for the finale, which is quite violent. --3/5

Bug report: Some Arachnotrons placed near the start didn't teleport out.

Share this post


Link to post
purist said:

If I had to guess I'd put the layout to C30N9 and the detailing to valkiriforce as it looks but does not play like a valkiriforce level.


I actually posted in the Interception thread the collaborative process of MAP23:

valkiriforce said:

C30N9 started this map by making the starting area and everything that leads to the red key. He was about to scrap it until I expressed interest in a collaborative effort. I did the area leading to the blue key as well as the last area you teleport to in the map. I made some edits to the areas that were previously established. I added the monster closets in the hallway to the red key, added the lift at the start. Added windows to the left and right of the yellow key room, two platforms northwest and northeast of the yellow key room that hold the Cacodemons. Added the red key switch north from the yellow key room. Added the yellow key bars leading to the teleport. Added the marble face south of the yellow key room. Slightly edited the function of the red key lift, and I think I added the torches in the red key hallway as well. He did some monster / item placement mostly leading to the red key room, but otherwise I did all the other monster / item placement from there.

Share this post


Link to post

MAP23: A short and sweet hell level that focuses on single room battles, which is usually a favorite of mine. The visuals were somewhat lacking but I found all the fights fun in their own way, thanks to the constant use of perched revenants. The dual cyber fight was fun too since the cramped nature of the room didn't allow me to strafe past any of the splash damage. Overall, quite enjoyable.

MAP24: Loved every minute of this 40 minute slog. I feel like this is a great companion to valkiriforce's "Ocean Outpost", both being well made non-linear levels but flexing their muscles in different ways. This large, angular hell base took some time to amass some armaments & ammo, but once I did so it calmed down... which was about fifteen minutes in. Battle for the red key was my favorite due to the atmosphere and the structure of the arena, and I felt the other two key fights weren't quite as up to par. Still fun though. One of my favorite maps out of the whole set... only problem was a lot of monster bunching, but its because of the nature of the level.

Share this post


Link to post

Map 28 -- Amongst the Ash - 101% kills / 100% secrets
This one was quite the tour de force, and I loved every minute of it. Despite the similar starting monster count of 500, this is generally easier than either of Pottus' maps. Not to say it's a walk in the park--the action is quite bloody at times--but this is a map where you notice the cinematic aspects of the journey, and the variety of different combat styles throughout, in contrast to maps like 24 and 26, which, like some styles of slaughtermap (although I don't think either of these accurately fits that broad genre of map), feel more like monster/ordnance-based puzzles. I agree with pretty much everything Kristian has already said, and my experience was very similar to his, with the major exception that I played the eastern area (yellow skull/complex route) before the western area (red skull/arch-vile lair); I can report that the ammo balance works very well in this variation of approach, too.

There is a lot of variety in that eastern area, both in terms of combat/exploration and in terms of aesthetics. The structure is generally very abstract, uses a wide variety of textures (although there is enough repetition of the elements of wood-based textures and lava to tie the whole together), and all kinds of surreal details (I don't know what the hell that dogleg wooden beam between the two wooden spires over a lava lake is supposed to be, but it's cool-looking), some of the grandest of which are placed outside of the playable area, as in the same author's map 17. Because the surroundings are so abstract, I imagined this part of the map to depict something like a fragment of a shattered world conquered/absorbed by Hell aeons ago, technologically about as advanced as the world from Hexen, gradually being consumed by a great lake of brimstone as the millennia roll by. Things like this are the reason I choose to play with mouselook, even though I maintain Doom's classic autoaim functionality and generally refrain from using the free-aiming capability to gain a tactical advantage in mapsets that are not designed with mouselook in mind; it's to better appreciate the aesthetic details in lovingly-crafted maps like this, like the skeletal iron beams peaking through the decaying stonework of the ceiling over the BFG's bloody pool. But enough of my gushing about the aesthetics, as the combat is interesting here, too, with a variety of encounters ranging from devious (but quite survivable) traps, like the instant floor collapse in front of a cadre of Barons in the RL hall, the multidirectional mini-massacre near the yellow skull, or the frontal assault at various height levels in the library with tall stacks on the way out of the area. Mixed in with the steady stream of bloodletting is some light exploratory/puzzle-play, with the most involved part being the riddle of accessing the yellow key's area, which uses a sort of Flynn-esque principle of using one particular set of lift bars for a number of different purposes. This might stymy a few players, but I think sufficient clues (chiefly aural) have been provided. I'll echo Kristian's sentiment that the secrets here seem oddly understocked, though--the one near the picturesque prison cells in particular felt too large/well-hidden to contain nothing but 40 units of cell ammo.

The western area is thematically different but equally pleasing to behold; it's a derelict concrete building facade floating in a large lake of blood/lava. The shadowy interior has some human corpses and tech vestiges that have been largely enveloped by fleshy growth and more blood; as it is staffed entirely by arch-viles, I imagined it to be a cursed building absorbed by Hell (from a different world than the fragment in the eastern area) that the viles are in the process of somehow transforming into some unimaginable bioweapon. Despite the aforementioned theme of arch-viles, this is a pretty easy/relaxing area. You receive a megasphere and an abundance of rockets and shells before entering the construct, and the viles generally appear in front of you in groups of no more than two, leaving you ample space to lead them down narrow corridors/into previously cleared areas and dispose of them at your leisure (although there is one clever trap that could potentially flush you forward into unexplored areas, waking up yet more viles); no, I reckon I appreciated this part more for its ambiance and the change of pace it represented than for its action per se.

The final battle is a nice topper, providing ample space and ordnance in a clean-looking marble hall to deal with a pair of cyberdemons and a relatively small-scale slaughter; not too stressful, but quite satisfying. On a replay, I found that it's fun to initially ignore the cybers and just do the timed switch runs (you can get a good start on it before they can even move if you're fast) to turn loose the horde, which the cybers will gleefully clean up for you, allowing you ample opportunity to BFG at least one of them in the back at point-blank range (or even just leave the area, if you're so inclined).

Overall, as my greater-than-usual windbaggery probably suggests, I really don't have anything significant to say about this map that's negative, as even the minimally-rewarding secrets seemed just more unusual than actually problematic. One thing I found while wandering around the map with idclip and -nomonsters to admire the scenery is that the backside of the vile-lair building outside of the window by the switch that is nearest to the combat armor/metal barricades is untextured and so produces the medusa effect; but, this view is effectively inaccessible in normal play (although maybe you could do it with a vile-jump if you were for some reason doggedly determined to do so?), so it's hardly a big deal.

Share this post


Link to post

Going to have to catch up, but I'm not sure when.
MAP27
-Nice outdoor atmosphere
-Good to know blood doesn't hurt anymore (as indicated by lava).
-Odd place for a cyberdemon, especially since you can abandon it so easily.
-I got bored with the midi again. After listening to it again it feels more at home here than it did with the other map, as it feels more endgame.

Share this post


Link to post

MAP28 - AMONGST THE ASH

Another big map, but despite another 500+ monster count, there's plenty of zombies and imps to pad it out, so it's not as onerous as the 500 monsters in MAP26 (which were pretty much all 3+ rocket enemies). I ended up getting the yellow key first, then the red. It definitely feels like two different maps (and if I'm interpreting the author's comments in the Interception release thread, they were orginally two separate maps stuck together). The yellow key section is a long, linear, meticulously designed castle-ish area, which is quite the adventure. Aside from the yellow key room itself, it's nothing too challenging (though a couple spots, such as the two Arch-Viles behind a door with columns that trap you inside, can catch an unprepared player off guard). Still, was quite fun. Like others, the area with the switch/columns/teleport/switch/run to the other columns took me awhile; something more set for a secret, but was fun to puzzle out. And while the yellow key was a "monsters teleport in" trap, unlike ones in other maps it was well-thought out - you can initially stem the tide of monsters with the rocket launcher and the choke point, but need to make sure to take out the arachnatron sniper, then change weapons/strategies when the cacos start teleporting in from outside. Pretty fun, and lots of nice visuals (such as seeing the bridge you run across at the start from afar where you can see it's "3D", or the structures in the distance).

The red key area is vastly different, feeling much more like an old-school Doom level with a mishmash of textures, abstract room design, and lots of dim lighting. Then fill it with nothing but Arch-Viles. The lighting and layout go a long way towards making this area seem scary, as the player doesn't feel they can easily predict where the next Arch-Vile will come from. I'm glad I played it as the second part, it made a nice change after the usual parade of enemies in the yellow key area. Not sure I would've liked it as much the other way around.

Unfortunately, I got stuck on the blue key (can't shoot through the gate). Reading the other thread, that bug may have been fixed by now. That was kind of a bummer, but anyways, a little noclip and off to the final area. 2 Cyberdemons was predictable and relatively easy, but the final battle had me on my toes but not frustrated.

Very fine level, probably my favorite of the WAD so far.

Share this post


Link to post

If you use a port that has a "bullets can hit ceilings/floors" comp setting, turning it off for a moment (e.g. so that bullets never hit the ceiling/floor) will fix that blue key cage for the time being. Worked for me, anyway.

Share this post


Link to post

MAP32:
This had all sorts of classic IWAD vibes going on; looks, difficulty, style... short(ish) and sweet. The Invulnerability at the start was far too obvious in that something big was going to be behind that door, and... well alright, so it wasn't that big a fight, but it was enough to convince me that I'd done the right thing in saving the Sphere of Inverted-Monochrome Vision for later use.

A very welcome Megasphere at the end too. A subtle secret, but one that requires no more than a discerning eye to uncover (as opposed to then having to also go on some magic switch-hunt).


MAP16:
Eeehhhhh, this was 'okay'. Much like MAP10, it was generally too cramped for my tastes to be fully enjoyable. It looks nice and the way areas link is all very cool, but really doesn't seem to play as well as it could thanks to constantly being stuffed down tight corridors as if playing Advanced Sausage Factory Simulator 2013.

Also: mandatory damagesector. It's about 2 seconds of wading around, but that's not the point. It's still mandatory. asdf123. NO.


MAP17:
Holy shit, look at that monster count. And an instant Cyberdemon* encounter! WELL...

First things first -- this scenery struck a chord. It's incredibly simple in construction, but adequately creepy:


So then, several hundred monsters between me and my prescription dr-.. uh, the exit. This one took a while. More than a while in fact, I was looking at around 35 minutes by the end. I won't go into detail about how everything unfolded, but it largely involved lots of fighting sprinkled with the occasional shout of "you motherfucker!" whenever something (fucking Revenants) scored a noticeable hit. Sadly it eventually got to a point where combat felt like it was just being forced on me for the sake of buffing up the enemy numbers *COUGH*COUGH*BLUE SKULLKEY*COUGH*, resulting in hitting '7' and holding down MOUSE1 for a few seconds. This section was more tedious than exciting I'm afraid.

Then I stupidly spent forever looking for the Yellow Skullkey, despite it almost literally being out in the open and up for grabs. What a dickhead. A few dead Revenants and a failed duo of Arch-Viles later, and it was over.

This room, despite using a simple trick, just looks so fucking cool:


Also, my curiosity was stoked on seeing this flickering set of monitors:


Imagine my disappointment when that's all they really were:


Still, I was on the right path to getting a different secret, so it's not all bad.

*It's really worth killing this thing ASAP. While I initially intended to avoid it, hearing a quartet of Barons shout at me as they both blocked my escape route and advanced on me was reason enough to get them involved in distracting the Cyberdemon for enough time for me to nuke it with the BFG. It paid off later; I really needed that Megasphere after that what-seemed-like-neverending bullshit Blue Skullkey gauntlet, and if the Cyberdemon was still alive...

Share this post


Link to post

Map29 - Barbatos' Fortress by General Rainbow Bacon
Tough map, but never unfair. Big and brutal start with lots of enemies to deal with. Unlike a lot of grb's maps this map was much nicer on the eye and the nerves. The difficulty around the same to the previous map until the yellow key door. The final fights were a bit much for me but I found an easy way out of luring all the monsters to start fighting with each other in the mastermind area and broke the teleport trap there (note grb use monster block lines there so monsters cannot use that teleporter themselves to break that trap)
the final room I guess isn't too bad but you need to have saved up health/armour and ammo for that room because you get pretty much naff all in there.
Overall a good map.

Share this post


Link to post

MAP25: Another nice 10 minute map before going back into Pottus-land. C30N9 tends to create somewhat linear levels with some interesting parts here and there (like the big bloodfalls room and cyberdemon reveal), but afterwards nothing really sticks out as striking to me. Felt very much like an intermission map.

MAP26: Didn't quite enjoy this as much as Abysmal Affliction... it felt a lot more linear to me and less cohesive. I also didn't realize the switches open up weapons compartments and wound up stealing my first weapons from some former troops and had plenty of long duels with barons, which wore down my persistence. One thing I do like about both of Pottus' maps is how he changes the gameplay from survival/exploration to arena based battles once the player is well equipped. All the arena battles had more teeth this time around which I enjoyed, and I wound up having fun aka dying in every one. The curvy imp place felt a bit disjointed after all the slaughtering, but other than that, it was a fun, long, grueling map. Congrats to anyone that 100/100'd this.

MAP27: Another short level that was really fun to blast through. Great architecture, wonderful fights (like the Fisty Finale) and a cool layout. I thought the cyberdemon was going to be a bore to kill but we engaged in a very neat dance with one another. I enjoyed this the most out of the three maps I played today.

Share this post


Link to post

Going for a mega catch up session

25 - Demon's Spite by C30N9

This was an evil little map that seemed intent on keeping me running. Right from the start I was chased and hounded from corner to corner by monsters while trying to find enough bullets to kill them. I was finding ammo to be in rather short supply, having to leave a lot of stuff alive just to have enough to deal with what came next. I don't mind that so much though, it keeps you on your toes for sure, and there was always a handy box of shells waiting if you survived long enough. I certainly didn't waste anything on that cyberdemon. So glad the blood floor in the exit room wasn't damaging, those archviles would have been a nightmare otherwise. Nice compact map with awkward fights and hectic pacing.

26 - Blood Siege by Pottus

Ok, thats the end of the mega catch up session. This map took so much effort to finish I need a break. Cant say I enjoyed this map, it turned into a bit of a grim chore. First off running around trying to find weapons to fight the masses of monsters, and after exploring and dying inch by inch it turned out that random switches I found in various places were opening doors to the weapon rooms back at the start... wasted a lot of time and health and rad suits to find that out. Then it seems I'm only getting SSG to deal with armies of everything - killing half a dozen barons with that thing can really start to drag, also dodging rockets from a cyber while burning feet on damaging floor which is everywhere... after what seemed an age of hearing that bloody gun sound and dying and saving and dying I finally run out of places to explore and rad suits to explore with. I gave up at that point and went to check the map in doom builder, turns out I had to press an invisible switch on a coffin to open a door somewhere else - the fact that the coffin room was also hidden behind a waterfall made me figure that was all just a secret area but anyway... Now I had a bigger gun and a whole lot more killing and dying to do, only cos I'd used up so much health just exploring I was mostly dying from the damaging floors - scraping through a fight with 20% health means nothing when just getting around will then kill you. At this point I got stuck again and went back to doom builder - turns out theres a red key hidden in a waterfall that I had no reason to know about. So then comes the final section of the map, and a big battle on mostly damaging floor again. You can get out of there and fight on solid ground, although be sure to have more than 20% health or a rad suit when you are done.

This map looked great, and had some really nice set-pieces and interesting areas to fight in, but there are a few things that made it a pain in the arse:
way too much meat for the firepower provided until the plasma rifle arrives.
damaging floors, I would just get rid of them completely. The fact that half the floors were of a similar colour but non damaging made it all the more annoying, and its no fun surviving a fight on low health to find you have no choice but to die because the floor is eating your feet.
Obscure switches, this isn't such a big deal in a map where exploring doesn't kill you but in this map you are pretty much punished for going anywhere so it doesnt inspire you to run around searching for stuff. The 2 points I gave up on were the coffin and the red key, the coffin gave no indication it was anything other than scenery and the red key was just invisible.

I would probably find this map more enjoyable playing it a second time knowing where everything is, but that first play through was a bit too arduous for me.

Share this post


Link to post

MAP28
-It's big, but it felt like a long linear trip if anything. If you get lost though, there's some exploring to be done, and it's neat to see it all connect.
-I liked the "3d" switch.
-Had more intense mob moments than the other biggie maps so far.
-Cyberdemon battle turns into a huge mob after pressing the switches. Kinda wish I had the cyberdemons take on the mob.
-During the yellow key trap you can jump out the window. Only stating this since there were impassable lines in other places preventing you from doing so.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×