Recurring Nightmare - now on /idgames

Now on /idgames!

(v1.0)

A map I made for last Saturday's Pigeon Speedmapping Session, which I subsequently decided to pull and release standalone. Original build time was roughly 4 hours, and I spent another couple hours this morning polishing it to how it is now.

Screens

Good shit! Beat it on my first try somehow, perhaps that stint with Plutonia Revisited paid off.

I feel like 50Monsters by AD_79 was a big influence, and not just by the fact that this thing has 50 monsters. :P That isn't a bad thing though: the map design is compact and cleanly detailed in much the same way and the gameplay is tight and vicious without being inaccessible to the layman such as myself. To be honest, it's kinda hard to think of any criticism: perhaps that the singular Archie at the end is kind of a non-threat considering the arsenal you're packing at that point, but other than that it's a damn fine piece of work. Cheers for making it. :)

First try, three attempts, final time 10:38, total 13:09

MAP01  DEAD  9/50   41  0/1  0/2  1:13+21
MAP01  DEAD  3/50   47  0/1  1/2  1:11+05
MAP01  EXIT  60/50  0   1/1  2/2  10:38+31

This took me three tries, I started off for some reason rather aggressively and died in more or less the same place twice. Third time finished with nothing alive despite being stuck on 4% health for quite a while. This was why I spent so long looking for the soulsphere secret before continuing, I was certain I would have to rely on the extra health later, and I was right, I would not have survived an archvile blast without it. The earlier secret I found pretty much by accident, just a random push that revealed a switch. Also not sure how I got through the radsuit section alive with two viles and what else down there.

The aforementioned plasma gun switch (line 750) is lower unpegged and slides down with the wall, which looks weird. The blue-locked switch, the trap floor (sector 3) might need to react faster as I easily backed out of the alcove then had some trouble getting in due to blocking monsters. Also things teleporting to below the red key can block a jump down if you back off after picking up the key instead of throwing yourself off the ledge immediately.

Another lovely map by you, an_mutt. I'd say your style fits in right at home with skillsaw and co., the big WADmakers but I digress- good content is good content!

UV Max

recurnm-352.zip

Took like 40 minutes to get this first pass, and clicked too fast at the end. The structure reminds me of Red Dawn in 50Mon. I feel like you really like triangle-ish narrow hallways, and yeah, fighting Revenants in these narrow hallways are just "fun". Yeah, definitely need some luck in some tight areas. Arch-viles are well placed (or you can say "annoyingly placed" ;P), so the player has to quickly deal with them. Otherwise, it will be pretty bad. Overall, it's an OK fun and challenging map. Thanks for making it.

Really like the pacing and design...those Archviles were rough, tho I was a little sloppy getting past the beginning..liked it a lot, thanks!

noisy_recurngtmr.zip

-my demos are split across 3 lmps, recorded in cl9.

fdas with many deaths :) - I smashed myself into the map over and over again until I stopped sucking, in the first lump i sucked and blamed it on my mouse so i switched to keyboard controls halfway through; i still sucked. I took a break, tried again and failed, then took a second break and succeeded on the third try (after finding a useful plasma secret too).

here's a small writeup after a glass of wine, just a thought dump of some qualitative observations:

thank you for map. g'night.

Did a max (3:13). Gameplay-wise, this sort of middle-of-the-road map isn't my cup of tea: has a few too many nuisances to be a leisure map (chief among them: the HK descent is really awkward mechanically, because you move to the side and then and get pinned between the platform you were on and the wall and essentially eat a forced HK shot while immobile and unaware of why you can't move), but it's also much too easy to be 'hardcore'; monster placement tends to be inconvenient/Plutonia-ish rather than visceral/in-your-face. Design is cool though. More Mechadon-ish than usual, with the triangle parts and a bit of the architecture (this style is definitely not out of the norm for you, but the textures wrap around  themselves a lot more than usual). 

rn_rd_max.zip

9 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

Did a max (3:13).

Oh god... got destroyed again.

Haha, don't worry, it's the natural progression of runs :D. I wouldn't have got this without your demo, and it's still improvable ofc. 

6 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

Haha, don't worry, it's the natural progression of runs :D. I wouldn't have got this without your demo, and it's still improvable ofc. 

Nah, not really worry, but it's kind of funny that I'm way off from a good route for some reason ;P  After watching your demo, I have no idea why I want to kill that Arch-vile first after the getting Red Skull.

The thing for this map is that RNG plays a quite important role especially the Arch-viles. Talking about the HK descent, one more similar thing is that drop from the Red Skull Key. Died there like 2 or 3 times.

Hey chaps, many thanks for the demos! I watched 'em all a few days back and made some edits to the map, and the final version is now on /idgames. Nothing big has been changed, just a few small tweaks (the blue key switch trap now lowers more quickly, and the soulsphere secret is less tedious to grab) along with some further visual polish.

There is already a mapset called Recurring nightmare,it's a (unfinished) remake of the Ultimate Doom levels. Maybe you should consider to change the name to prevent confusions. Just a suggestion