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Chris Hansen

Release - Flay The Obscene Reversed

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I have completed my extensive revamp of my original "Flay the obscene" (which was released 15 years ago). This time you even get to play it the other way around!

Since it looks and plays completely different, I look at it as a fourth entry to the series.

There's been some extensive testing on this level, so it should run fine with any sourceport as long as it is limit removing. The difficulty has been described as "medium-hard" by one of the testers. It's for Doom II.

I don't really know what else to say other than I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I did making it :)

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?file=levels/doom2/Ports/d-f/flay4rev.zip

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Woohoo! If your reflexes are as shot as mine, prepare for an ass-whooping in this map ;-)

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Really great map. Ammo and Health shortage provide a tense atmosphere.
The Cybie fight was actually the easiest part of the map.

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High quality designed map with a great atmosphere (Kristian Aro makes fantastic music). I'm not sure if you watch demos but if you do, here is one. Surviving wasn't hard, especially with that easy soulsphere secret, but enjoyable nevertheless. And I gotta say this level had one of the most satisfying endings I've ever seen in Doom. That tense part with no monsters and creepy music was really good, an excellent buildup to the cyberdemon fight. Too bad the fight itself is very easy by modern standards, but it's still an excellent way to end the level.

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Memfis said:

that easy soulsphere secret


I still haven't been able to figure it out, and I even cheated and looked at it in a map editor for a while ;-P

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I like this map a lot. Great design, both for the overall structure and execution of particular details, really well crafted out atmosphere too. I've noticed repeated usage of 64-wide narrow corridors in your maps, parts with them also tend to be very linear and mandatory for progress, sometimes features slow lifts. They are good distinctive elements of your style, but I still think that you could use them less. Wider (at least 128 units) corridors are more comfortable to move in (specially in multiplayer/coop), and if combined with low ceiling, their appearance and feel can remain the same as you intend.

I consider the ending build-up amazing, and the fight itself was enjoyable for me even despite the ease, actually I was glad.

Nice secrets throughout, I appreciate various ways of hiding them.

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Even after all these years, it's still exciting to hear what people have to say :) I'm glad you liked it! It keeps me motivated to finish the next level as soon as possible.

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Memfis said:

High quality designed map with a great atmosphere (Kristian Aro makes fantastic music). I'm not sure if you watch demos but if you do, here is one. Surviving wasn't hard, especially with that easy soulsphere secret, but enjoyable nevertheless. And I gotta say this level had one of the most satisfying endings I've ever seen in Doom. That tense part with no monsters and creepy music was really good, an excellent buildup to the cyberdemon fight. Too bad the fight itself is very easy by modern standards, but it's still an excellent way to end the level.


Aye, Kristian's music is really awesome! I'm glad he let me use one of his tracks.

I will watch the demo tomorrow. What port, complevel etc. should I use to play it?

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Hansen map? Instant download from me. I quite liked the Flay the Obscene series so consider me interested. Might get a max for this done at some point. Oh and complevels (if you didn't know), 2 for vanilla Doom 2, 9 for Boom, 3 for vanilla OG Doom/Ultimate.

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Thanks, Springy!

And regarding the complevels thing: I am familiar with them. I only assumed, that I can only playback a demo with the exact same port, complevel etc., which was used to record it :)

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Normally you don't need to specify complevel: prboom-plus should be able to autodetect it correctly in most cases. If you associate the *.lmp type with the exe and prboom-plus knows where the wad is located (typically DOOMWADDIR or the port's folder), you can watch demos by just double-clicking on them.

edit: oops, found a little bug. In prboom-plus, after you trigger linedef 2369, some torches in the room become misplaced: http://i.imgur.com/Klqa6j9.png Sometimes, when an object is too close to a floor of different height and something moves nearby, vanilla Doom will recalculate the height of that object. Maybe you've seen this happening before.

I believe you could fix this by changing tall red torch's radius to 1 with a simple DEH patch. It won't affect the gameplay anywhere as far as I can see, so even my demo won't desync. Oh, and by the way, each torch isn't placed exactly in the center of its sector: a very minor issue but I noticed it. :)

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@Memfis - awesome demo. Loved it!

I had the distinct honor to be one of the testers for this map. In fact, I'm the one who called it "medium hard."

This is an exquisite map, with an essentially perfect level of detailing, interesting architecture, and entertaining fights. The red key fight was the one that gave me the most trouble, given that I suffer the keyboarder disease of having difficulty with Revenants. It was fun to watch Memfis totally own that fight.

This map has great atmosphere thanks to its excellent architecure, like the courtyard with the blood fountain, and superb detail like the SW1Garg columns bleeding from their mouths. How fuckin' cool is that? And then there's that killer BGM track by Kristian Aro that gives the map kind of a floaty feeling, yet helps maintain the tension and pressure throughout.

I was especially interested in this map because I'm doing something similar with my Realm of Chaos maps, and I know from painful experience that it's much more difficult to revise old, flawed maps than it is to make new -- and quite possibly flawed as well! -- maps. So I had to play the original to see how well Chris handled the job. IMO, he knocked it outta the park. The original Flay had some solid architecture to build on, and Chris embellished it beautifully. Even better was the new gameplay, because by reversing the path, it seems to me that he found the path he should have taken all along. There's much more drama in this version, including that build-up to the Cyb fight, which was not there in the original, though much of the architecture was. In the original, you end up in an easy, dull battle with Barons. The original only had one decent fight -- in the red key area -- but the new version has entertaining combat throughout. It completely blows away the original in this regard. It isn't super-hard, but the health/ammo balance is well-tuned, and if you're not comfortable pain-chancing Archies in close combat, you can run into some problems. You can also have trouble if you don't find the way to the Soulsphere. Props to Memfis for figuring it out -- I had to have Chris tell me how to reach it (face glows red with shame!).

So there it is. Quality work through and through. I'm looking forward to the next!

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Memfis said:

Normally you don't need to specify complevel: prboom-plus should be able to autodetect it correctly in most cases. If you associate the *.lmp type with the exe and prboom-plus knows where the wad is located (typically DOOMWADDIR or the port's folder), you can watch demos by just double-clicking on them.

edit: oops, found a little bug. In prboom-plus, after you trigger linedef 2369, some torches in the room become misplaced: http://i.imgur.com/Klqa6j9.png Sometimes, when an object is too close to a floor of different height and something moves nearby, vanilla Doom will recalculate the height of that object. Maybe you've seen this happening before.

I believe you could fix this by changing tall red torch's radius to 1 with a simple DEH patch. It won't affect the gameplay anywhere as far as I can see, so even my demo won't desync. Oh, and by the way, each torch isn't placed exactly in the center of its sector: a very minor issue but I noticed it. :)


Thanks for the hints and advice!

I'm a bit bummed about that torch thing. I was pretty sure we had caught every bug.

I will watch your demo now.

Edit: Finished watching your demo, and I have to agree with SteveD, that was fucking cool! Your approach to a level is cooler than Lando Calrissian in a hot space ship! You pretty much approaced and played the level as I intended and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it. Thanks for taking your time to record that and share it.

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This was really fun, I love the credits. Some of the areas and tunnels look really cool. I should have taken screenshots but there's a tunnel after an elevator with candles on the floor and blue vials, that looked really nice.

I'll have to play the original map, I'm pretty new to Doom wads, got a huge backlog.

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Cool, another Chris Hansen map :)
I really liked the High/Low series but I've never tried the original Flay The Obscene. Let's take a look at the revamped version then...

Here's a demo showing my playthrough in flay4rev.wad : here

Great stuff. Gameplay-wise the level is a solid Doom II experience, and I'd say that it's not really hard overall despite the shortage of health and some sudden Arch-Vile / Revenant ambushes. It seems there's always an easy way to evade most traps, which is not a bad thing.

Great Chaingunner usage. They tend to appear either on the same floor level as you or in elevated spots, but are never too dangerous or annoying.

The frightening build-up before the Cyberdemon fight is particularly effective. I feel like I haven't played the actual fight the way you intended it though, I stayed in the storage room with the lift and kept taking pot shots at the Cyber, killing it before getting to the huge cave area.

Your map is also a prime example of good interconnection between areas ( the same could be said about the High/Low series ).

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Again, thank you for enjoying the level, guys!

And, Wilou, don't feel bad for having fought the cyber from the crate room. Part of why the barrels are there and all the chaingun ammo is to give players like you another kind of challenge in that fight :) Some, like Memfis, spots the way out of the room pretty quickly and fights him in the open with lots of rockets. Others, like you, do it the other way. From the feedback from the testers, I knew that the fight wouldn't cause any major problems to most of you, so I wanted to make it more moody and give options in the way to approach it. And thanks for sharing your demo, it was interesting and exciting to watch :)

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MegaTurtleRex said:

I'll have to play the original map, I'm pretty new to Doom wads, got a huge backlog.


If you have a huge backlog, then feel free to skip the original map. It's not really that interesting other than as a novelty item or a trip down memory lane ;)

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Hmm, I've played the original Flay the Obscene--probably almost as long ago as you released it--so I decided to give this a shot and see what I remembered. This was the result.

Turns out I apparently hardly remember/recognize anything about the original map other than that blood fountain (and hell, maybe even there what I'm really remembering is some other map) and perhaps the general texture scheme, but I had a good time nonetheless. The action managed to feel nice and bloody despite using a relatively low number of monsters, probably a result of the pulses of weak monsters occasionally punctuated by arch-viles and mid-tier guys. Typical of a Chris Hansen map, I didn't see very many health packs at all--probably a good thing I got the 'parkour' soulsphere, since I made a mistake and was hit by one of the later viles once (and a heroic imp saved me from another, rest assured I've already sent his family a nice fruit basket)--but ammo seemed plentiful, especially after I picked up the backpack. I also had the good fortune to go the 'wrong' way near the end of the map, which allowed me to silence the refilling sniper towers before they would've become a problem. Maybe this was a little too easy, perhaps the initial occupants could've been triggered to pop up on an insta-raise floor or something when the player moves over the upper crossway or something, but alas. Maybe that would've interfered too much with the last vile, anyway.

I will agree with the others in that I quite liked the ending sequence. It amounts to a very basic cyberdemon exercise, but the way it's set up and played out 'cinematically' makes all the difference, and I'm sure I'll remember this map much more clearly than the original as a result. A part of me wonders how it might've been if you'd had some pain elementals or something emerge from some caves in the rock when I charged up there to dance with him, but eh, fuck that part of me. He doesn't always need to have his say.

An unpretentious but visually attractive and engaging map, thanks for making it.

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Thank you DotW for the praise and the demo! Normally, I'm a bit bummed when someone almost effortlessly rips one of my maps apart, but when it's done with such class as in this case, I'm willing to make an exception :)

@ all three demos: It was awesome to see your reactions to the cyberdemon! I couldn't have wanted that to play out any better :)

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Chris is right, a demo by DoTW is always a joy to behold. Tremendous efficiency in shooting which I can't possibly match. I watched my failed demo right after his, and it took me 11 minutes longer to reach the end, even though I'd played the map before. BTW, I died because I got stuck on that damned tree while circle-strafing the Cyb. I need to learn better how to simply sidestep the damned things, because my iron rule of circle-strafing a Cyb is to never do a cut-back, as the result is almost always eating a rocket. Unfortunately, my circles become wider orbits as I go, I can't keep them tight, which is how I ended up on that fucking tree! ;D

I have to watch Wilou's demo next. Looking forward to it.

BTW, in both GLBoom-Plus 2.5.0.6, and 2.5.1.3, demos are playing back in double speed. In 2.5.0.6, the game speed also kept getting faster, until it also played at double speed. Anyone got any ideas about why this happens? Further, in 2.5.0.6, before the gamerplay sped up, it was appallingly slow and jerky, but got faster with every map I played. Weird.

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You can control game speed by pressing numpad +/- (also * to go to the default 100% speed). Maybe you're pressing these keys for some reason. You can see the speed on the alternative HUD (press the normal + a few times to see it).

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Thanks, Memfis, it worked! Part of the issue is that I normally play in Risen3D with Always Run. I only started playing in GLBoom to make demos. Well, being a keyboard-only player, guess what? All my movement keys are on the numpad. :D I use num 9 for strafe-right, and num 6 for turn right, and they are next to my huge + key, so every time I miss the movement keys I hit that thing.

Watching DoTW's demo at a game speed of 100 was like seeing it in a walking mode, so I think I'll stick with 150 for the speed. More fun to watch.

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Memfis said:

You can control game speed by pressing numpad +/- (also * to go to the default 100% speed). Maybe you're pressing these keys for some reason. You can see the speed on the alternative HUD (press the normal + a few times to see it).


Cool, thanks! I wasn't aware of that either.

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Another FDA, in Crispy Doom.
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1254319

Long pause when I get the Rocket Launcher, sorry. I think I did this the last time I FDA'd a map of yours? My old cat likes to throw up at the worst times :p . Fortunately you have just learned about the speedup function in PrBoom+.

Don't have much to add that hasn't been said already. Haven't played the original, liked this one a lot. Intertwines really nicely. There was one lift that I kept having to go up again and again, got a bit tedious. Also one switch that has some tutti-frutti, near the end. Minor errors though. For some reason that transparently-enclosed AV really had me on edge for a while, good job with that.

Switch:

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Katamori said:

Gameplay commentary video about the map.

I enjoyed it. Very nice map with awesome balance.


Just finished watching your video. I'm not sure it was intentional, but I found myself laughing out loud a couple of times! :) I just loved the way you panicked a couple of times and frantically started shooting or trying to escape the demon hordes! Fantastic stuff! Also, it was really cool to finally hear a voiced commentary on one of my levels. If I recall correctly, that's a first for me. It's always been written feedback. I thoroughly enjoyed watching your video and I thank you for having taken the time to record it :)

Ohh, btw. Look up the word "obese" ;D

plums said:


I'll check it out later today when I get home and get back to you :)

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Just going to echo the others: This looks really good, the texturing is top-notch. Gonna play this now!

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