xasermap - dead.wire v1.1 (2017-12-30)

strangeness abound - v1.1 (updated 2017-12-30)

Single map for GZDoom, with new weapons and some monster edits.

There's more to this strange facility than meets the eye. See for yourself.


Gameplay is a bit unusual, but canon at this point. Peel thine eyes.

I remember playing this a while ago, it was a really unique and interesting map.

A Xaser map? Oh Hell yeah I'm down to play this some time soon.

Great-looking screenshots, btw!

Fantastic map, and very eerie.

Too many invisible monsters.

review is up, thank you for this!

Thanks for reminding me this exists, kmx! I've been meaning to play it and damn was it worth it. Super great stuff.

Instant favorite in my book.

I really liked this. The concept of levels "reconfiguring" themselves is very interesting and I think should be explored even more.

Here's an FDA: xa-dwire fda [g2.1.pre-1354-gad6ce5a].lmp. There's technically two deaths in this but your window tricked me so ignore it.

Interesting thus far, however I found myself starved for ammo. When scavenging for more I became surrounded by demons and an unknown number of archviles with no pronounced position which quickly gave me absolutely nowhere to go. Not the biggest fan of needing clairvoyance to play a map.

Still looks pretty good though and I'll definitely need to play through it when I have more time.

This map is interesting to say the least.

I did get a bit of the doom64 vibe out of this. It was very enjoyable and the
weapon replacements weren't half bad either.
Its kinda amusing to see nearly every enemy as a specter(or not :p) and they could
potentially surprise you, because they don't have the wake-up scream.

Overall the map seemed pretty balanced, but you kinda had to stick to the pattern,
that you go for flamethrower first, else you didnt have enough ammo.

Instant death floors are always a no-go for me, but other than that I love the map and the ideas behind it.

Oh and the circle thing you have to jump too, that's actually a ring with a hole in the middle... Yea that was infuriating to fall into >.>

Played a bit of this and I really really like what I see so far! Stopped at a point as I need to sleep but thank you very much for this :)

Just gave this a go, pretty great map! Some things about it agitated me though, so I'll give a breakdown of things I liked and didn't like.

Things I liked: A crazy cool looking map dripping with atmosphere. I loved the way areas came into existence from the static. Nice use of 3D floors. Good creepy ambient music. New weapons felt good, I especially liked the Star Wars pew pew blaster, it pretty was fun to use. Difficulty was almost perfect.

Things I didn't like: As death112 pointed out, if you make the mistake of not doing the flame thrower area first, you get pretty boned for ammo. I did the blue torch sub-machinegun area first, and I had to run by a good couple of monsters on my way in there and out cause I had 0 bullets and shells. Speaking of the flamethrower fight, while I enjoy dick moves and hard battles to an extent, this part felt kinda unfair. It seemed like the only option I had was to run in a circle along the outer wall and pray an archvile didn't blast me from the darkness. The red ball gun you get at the end had an issue with its collision box. If you shot the weapon while you had a wall to your back, depending on the angle the ball would actually detonate because its box hit the wall behind me as the projectile spawned. So that was pretty frustrating hurting myself like that.

Also found some stuck imps in this area:



Nice map though!

I went through the flame thrower area first, died and died and died again and again, decided to try a different path instead. Going through the laser gun first, and then simply fleeing the monsters by jumping into the flamethrower courtyard area, let me use the laser on those obnoxious arch-viles and it was a lot simpler even if I had to use the flamethrower on the last two.


Bug: there's a dormant pain elemental that's never woken up because the trigger lines to wake it up aren't set to be activated in any way.

Thanks for all the plays on this, folks! Glad the ghostiness isn't too offputting in the end.

It's definitely a Very Bad Thing(tm) that folks are feeling forced to play the map in a particular order. Would adding more cells/bullets to the other two weapon areas help? Or just shell boxes? I don't run into ammo issues myself but that's because I'm a dirty cheater who knows where everything in the map is. :P

I might try and buff up the M16 a bit too since it's a bit underwhelming compared to the other two, IMO. Dunno how much that will help, but it's a start.

I'll probably need to re-add Painchance for the flame projectiles at least for the viles, since so many folks are getting headaches with that area. It'll probably be difficult even if you're allowed to stunlock them since you're likely to get attacked from multiple directions. It's definitely the evil-est part of the map, so I'll muck about with it one way or another.

Also, curse that PE (and also GZDB for not having a default activation type for UDMF :P ). The funny part is I could've sworn I took it out on purpose, since it's a terrible idea to have a ghost spawning other ghosts, but I might just leave it in a "semi-broken" state just to screw with folks who open the map. :P

[Heh, P. E. Gaster]

I too discovered the archie/pinkie arena first, but died so many times I decided to save it for last. (I eventually beat it, and it wasn't too difficult when I finally did, but puzzling it out took many tries.) I'm not sure how it would have made any difference, ammo-wise, if I had done that part first: I used up all the special weapon ammo in each arena as it debuted. Ammo was darn tight all around, up until the very final fight. At least I only had to punch out a single spider. :)

Brilliant (if often frustrating) map.

I see Xaser's stance on ammo has greatly changed since Zen Dynamics. Anyways, I'll definitely play this map at some point, I absolutely love atmospheric, creepy, sci-fi maps.

Let me just say, Xaser, that you are one of my favorite mappers.

I personally like the

Found a bug. It is possible to jump on one of the small ledges and then over the "entrance area" to access some sort of static area with a shotgun (the Cacowards screenshot), from which you cannot escape.
Edit:Also, the shotgun-sniper mode of the rifle does more damage than the regular shotgun and doesn't have any spread. That makes the shotgun pretty much obsolete.

killer2 said:

That makes the shotgun pretty much obsolete.

Not really, the regular shotgun has a greater rate of fire and the damage is enough for imps and zombie crowds where spread is actually useful. If the super shotgun didn't exist it'd be more clear-cut.

Ok I finished the map. Really nice and atmospheric, hard but not impossible difficulty and a really cool boss encounter.
The only thing I didn't quite like was the flamethrower's placement. You will encounter it first, but because the area it's in is so damn hard you probably want to clear it with the last weapon, the laser rifle (this is a hypothesis, I did manage to clear it with the flamethrower after a couple of reloads).
The flamethrower's altfire also seems very peculiar and out of place. It appears to lay some "mines" that deal more damage, but since you need to be fairly close range to use it and it can damage you, it feels clunky. Kind of liked the regular fire in the big arena though. It was a much safer imp killer than the "BFG".
Perhaps it's fault is that it ends rather abruptly. You just got to get yourself accustomed to all the cool weapons, only to have to ditch them pretty much immediately as everything aside from the flamethrower's primary (and maybe the laser for the knights, but eh) is pretty much useless in the "BFG" centered arena fight. Perhaps a few encounters where the whole arsenal is useful would have made this map even better. It could have also used some secrets I feel. Exploration goes well with survival(ish?) horror.
At any rate, this is a very solid map, great atmosphere and great gameplay. Looking forward to more (G)ZDoom releases from you. You delivered years back with Zen Dynamics and you deliver today with this. Fully worth the Cacoward!

Oh snap! It's dead.wire v1.1 oh no!

Quick summary of changes (from the top of my head):

• Added additional ammo the map in a few key places. Gameplay should be less railroad-y now.
• New shotgun sprites, by Da Werecat
• Buffed M16 -- RoF is higher.
• Slightly nerfed lasergun. Probably isn't noticeable.
• Flamethrower causes pain in enemies now. Should make the archvile arena saner.
• HRC projectiles no longer insta-explode if you're hugging a wall.
• Fixed being able to jump through the window behind the start before hitting the first switch (and getting stuck).
• Converted the mod to a pk3 -- "xa-dwire.wad" is retired, and "dead-wire.pk3" is the future. ;)
• A few minor other tweaks like automap fixes n' shiz.

Assuming all is kosher with this build, I'll /idgames it before long. Either way, enjoy!

What have I done.