occasional zan-zan-zawa-veia project

Every now and then I get the urge to make a map, the result tending to be a labyrinthine and dark scavenger level with crossed paths and bizarre combat. It's time to admit to myself that I am not a master at creating arcad-y combat scenarios - my view of monsters oscillates between their uses as ambient encounters and hilarious death-traps and it's time I allowed someone to help me to point that needle towards the sensible middle path. =P

I'm looking for a mapping partner who'll populate my layouts for UV and Co-op play with an eye for fun, pressure and fast-paced action. I'll tag my attempts at gameplay as HMP so that they don't contaminate yours!

(if my layouts piss you off then don't sign up! You might need to have a soft spot for level sets like TNT, ALT, Scientist etc. to really embrace my questionable style.)

here's a level in urgent need of an army, for starters. Feel free to divert teleporters so that they go one place on HMP and another on Ultraviolence, use obstacles, add sound-blocking lines and extra teleporter traps and what have you, as long as it doesn't have too much of a destructive effect on how the map started out! Make the difficulty modern (that's your interpretation of exactly when "modern" begins...) and keep the ammo flowing!

The sky patch and the MIDI are both placeholders for now; everything else is stock.

I'm in dude!

Hey, finally got around to this. Here is your map, with things and stuff.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/5q3n62i45plr3f1/zziadfp_rdwpa.wad

Has UV only. Not very first playthrough friendly, but thoroughly tested. Could use more spiderdemons.

Ooo; will definitely play an rdwpa version of a zan-zan map!

Having an intense love for monster placement (though I'm nowhere near a great mapper; just love to do it), I would also love to outfit one of your future maps with fairly quick and easy, pressuring gameplay for UV, so long as you also let me have HNTR for a rocket+PE heaven, purely to fit with the zany style we all know and love, of course ;D

haha nice work rwdpa >:) I forgot I made this thread so this was a surprise. your placement is fairly hardcore, might wait to see if a demo arises. the ss soldiers made me giggle, the exit encounter scares the heck out of me

fonze: maybe we could work on something together sometime!

Casual UV playthrough.

It'd be fun, yak :)

Well, I gave this map a shot earlier today... didn't go so well for me haha. It was a Hell of a lot of fun, but man if I didn't die more times than I can count. Ammo is just so scarce in the beginning and my fisting game is currently in need of work, but I like what I've seen. Btw, props on the SM+bulls setup by the SS, lol, but that crusher is just damn harsh (though I suspect zany zan zan for that). Speaking of zany, I like that rdwpa captured the atmosphere of yak's style with things like that SM+bulls setup and the dual RLs+rockets atop the lift behind the cyber.

Here's my embarrassing 87-minute long FDA with saves and more deaths than monkeys you could fit in a barrel... and those things hold a lot of monkeys! I wasn't sure on the -complevel, so I went with 9. I ended the map with 270/342 kills, 35/50 items, and 1/3 secrets.

A kinda random thing: I like how there was a lone cacodemon that plagued me the entire map. Like sometimes he'd be in a particular place and I'd kill him and other times he'd be gone, to show up later in the map. I'm not entirely sure what I did differently to cause that, but it made me laugh every time I'd see one cacodemon randomly show up.

On to less insignificant things, after establishing a foothold in the map, things eased up quite a bit. It's clear that you are supposed to get the berserk pack by the spider, but starting off without finding the way back (from the alt entrance) to the berserk proved futile for the most part, given the lack of ammo in the beginning/main area of the map.

The progression of this map was, once again for lack of a better word, zany in regards to both its progression and monster placement/progression of encounters (weapons, ammo, health, opposition, etc). Granted, I did play for an hour and a half, so all that time spent dying did actually go towards me *gasp* learning the level and being able to at least somewhat remember where I was. The texture use really didn't help much with the sense of knowing what was going on/where I was, as all that stucco tends to blend together. Although I should note that it was a facet of the map that I happened to like. Perhaps I just like puzzles, or thinking, or at least stuff not being totally straightforward, but the weird aspects of yakfak's maps are things that I like. That said, while I am talking about progression: I'm a bit miffed that upon reaching the exit, I couldn't go back to look for the stuff I missed, but that's the way things go sometimes, so it's no big deal to me. Continuing on with progression, the weapon progression was really strange. Not so much the order, but the time into the map when they are found. Another reason I noted the need for the berserk pack; the first weapon found is an RL with either 6 shots or 24 and good luck finding any more for a bit. Shortly before/after finding the RL is a chaingunner to give a much-needed CG, but lo there are no bullets. Well, there are, just not nearly enough, heh. I say enough as-in to kill most of the mobs in order to feel safe, but there is more than enough to plow through the main targets and coax infighting with many others. Combined with a steady berserking hand, ammo was a lot less of a problem than I had first surmised. It was a cruel touch making the SSG a secret, then following that up with a semi-secret BFG which immediately preceded a mandatory BFG... looool. Zany, I tells ya! Luckily the SSG was not that tough to find, though the first time I hit the switch for it all I could think was "you asshole, don't tell me that switch did nothing but release a PE!" hehe. Still, good chance that even yakfak isn't zany-enough to make a switch which does nothing, so I figured it was good to kill another PE. Speaking of which, I love PEs, this map had far too few. And rockets. But that's a topic for another time...

There were a couple switches in here that I think could have been better telegraphed as far as what they did. There were a couple other times where the way forward wasn't immediately apparent, but I don't mind having to think a bit about where to go.

The Keen death pit was a cruel thing; shame on you zan zan! Mostly just for the blocking corpses; that pit would suck far less if all were blocking, or preferably if none were.

It took me a little while to realize that the BA was booby trapped with the AV's, given the times I had grabbed it while pacifisting (and Idk why, seems obvious, though I was sure the line was elsewhere, like closer to the RL, due to the shallowness of the cubbyhole).

There were a few times I found what I thought was going to be a secret that wound up being either mandatory progression or possibly just an optional place to visit.

I liked the use of powerups throughout the map, though I missed the megasphere secret fight. Gonna have to go back and check that out at some point. The invul sphere was a good touch; only in retrospect do I realize its best use.

General layout and texture-use was on point; always love yakfak designs. I liked the overall monster placement as well; things stayed fairly pressuring throughout the map without too much meat on the plate. The beginning and the end I think were the toughest places, though the cyber by the green floor close to the end was in a tough spot to deal with quickly. I liked the AV and PE use in this map; chaingunners were good sometimes and not-so-much others. Loved the SM use; I agree it could have used more, hehe. Most all of the enemy placement was just right up my alley, shame I didn't play a bit better to match, though, but all-around I had a great time unraveling this map! Great job you two!

Hey, thanks a lot. You caught quite a few mistakes of mine. Biggest one:

I'll post a fix later.

I think I can get rid of the green armor and berserk pack later; probably won't be necessary if the player survives up until then. Yeah, more PEs would be a good idea. :)

So I grabbed the Berserk and the Invulnerability Sphere and ran around. I found two Spiderdemons, a Cyber and a handful of AVs.

And I have a Pistol. I'm punching PEs.

Seriously?

I have better things to do.

^ where does this self-righteous sense of play-style entitlement originate, I wonder? :P

Great job on this, rwdpa, and good demo. It occurs to me that a version of this level ended up in DWMP2015 with a much less coherently placed item set, I wish I'd held off! fonze's nervous FDA is really enlightening too, heehee and that's a fine write-up.

from now on if I find I have a second layout to share I'll keep it exclusive rather than appending it to someone else's project