The DWmegawad Club plays: Tangerine Nightmare & UAC Ultra & Realm of Shades

MAP05: Orange Juice

31:36 | 99% Kills | 100% Items | 80% Secrets

Phew! That was... well. I was expecting something rough from tmorrow's post above. And, really, I didn't find it too bad. Until the red key ambush. Holy crud. (I may have slammed my keyboard a couple times there.) Probably took me a dozen attempts to get past that; the rest of the level was a breeze by comparison. (The only other time I died was the pinkie/arachno ambush.) It's a purely linear map, but it makes up for that by being absolutely gorgeous, and be the very cool way the level transforms around you as you progress. I particular liked the staircase down to the exit. I got four of the five secrets; the existence of the rest was fairly obvious, even if the means of accessing them wasn't immediately so, so I'm not sure what I missed. Cybie was a bit of a joke, since I was able to safely plink and plunk away at him with my SSG from the top of the waterfall. Pretty cool map.

MAP05 Orange Juice

Good track = Bad map. Will that hold true here? I also hear a cyberdemon upon shooting. I have grown to hate hearing that, you know why? Because you know he's here, but you don't know when he shows up.

Action start, shouldn't be too much to handle. Took me awhile to get going though, but afterwards, much of the level is compact and linear. And also quite hard too. The levels do in fact scale the challenge rather well. Two teleport ambushes stand out, one near the eastern outdoor area, and one upon retracing the steps back to the starting area on the west side. The cyber appears after you find a convenient plasma gun. Overall, another map picking up the pace quite well without going overblown overblown overblown.

MAP04: Another cool map for the setting and atmosphere. I didn't like so much the gameplay in the first parts where it's plenty of sniper around but it get better later on. I must say that I'm starting to get tired of this orange theme...

3 hours ago, gaspe said:

I must say that I'm starting to get tired of this orange theme...

Well, i mean, that is the theme of the wad afterall :/ 

What would someone expect from a wad called "tangerine" nightmare? Haha

Tangerine Nightmare without orange is like Doom without monsters , it's tasteless.

map06: The Forgotten Land - JCD
zdoom2.8.1, uvmax, pistol start, no saves, first time played

Once again we are treated to a great map layout. This one consists of a large open areas connected by buildings and two large caverns. Only one part of the lava is damaging and that's in the blue key area. While there is a definite progression and linearity, you can arrange how you tackle the fights. In my view an overall a drop down in difficulty from the previous map.

The map does have several slaughter elements and you can cause a lot of infighting at various places, especially the caverns. Monster placement is good and challenging. You are locked in at two points, once in the caverns and then at the large circular section at the end. In each case there plenty of room to move.

The secrets are fairly straightforward to find and contain excellent items, a megasphere, blue armor and an invulnerability sphere.

Note there is a non official secret on this map:

1 hour ago, Roofi said:

Tangerine Nightmare without orange is like Doom without monsters , it's tasteless.

HEY.

Anyway, trying to catch up.

MAP02: Being such a linear and cramped level, the design of the map is dependent largely upon how the traps play out. For the most part it works, but it fails to really punish cowardice, allowing the player to backpedal whenever they trigger a trap door. The layout of the map is pretty neat but the amount of paths through the map is somewhat dizzying, as you open up so many side doors that the hellish complex feels like a series of intermittent walls stitched together. It’s a well detailed map and still has plenty of Doom action thankfully; a solid experience, albeit less impressive than MAP01.

Those new cacos have some pretty menacing eyes… er, eyeball?

MAP03: Mmm those delicious franckFRAG rocky exteriors…

I liked the combat in this map—there was a pretty liberal archvile use, which is fine by me. Some of the AVs were shoved into awkward spaces (like the two behind the mancs in southernmost hallway), but it made the combat more interesting that way, forcing me to decide when & where to use my precious rockets and hide behind corners. There could probably be less shells on the map, but besides that the map is A-OK. Loooove the detailing here, even in areas as pointless as the exit room. I think besides the unconventional color pick, the real highlight of Tangerine Nightmare is its architecture, as there are so few bright & colorful gothic fortress sets. I like how the computer map is a scroll too—cute touch.

 (Except when the level proposes an original concept like the Given :D)

wow already well behind!

glboom+ / uv pistol starts / saveless

map02 fda

map03 fda

map04 fda

Just found that I missed one monster in map04 :(

Will do it later T_T

Map 06 : The forgotten land (Tangerine Nightmare)

Sorry , the map is big so the layout doesn't render very well.

Difficulty : Medium

This is the JCD's map but he also made the credits map with me. This my favourite map of the mapset (Without counting map 07 which is mine heh) : Fun , not too hard , pleasant esthethics even if I found it a bit underdetailed. Maps also begin to contain a high ammount of monsters from there on ultra-violence. This one has 477 monsters , but the seventh has 500 , ~630 for the IOS map and ~700 for Wilou's level.

As said before , the map proposes a lot of epic fights , mainly at blue key arena which is one of the most memorable passage according to me in Tangerine Nightmare. This map is not really easy but the difficulty drops down because the traps are less unfair and brutal than in map 05 , it's possible to dodge more easily the projectiles because there are a lot of open spaces , plenty of ammo and health , the easiness to find a spot to take refuge in each trap (The blue trap is pretty easy because you can hide in the building.)

In contrast, I tend to reproach the lack of details that impacts more or less  all the level.  The outdoors look pretty nice even if I don't really like brown rocks but the detailling is too much simple in the buildings and the entrance of the blue key area whereas the previous map show how can Tangerine Nightmare's textures can be beautiful if you manage to put a lot of light gradations and varied textures. However this map stills have  some must-to-see places : the blue key's cave and the circular path at the end. I also liked the exit's portal , you wonder where do the white hole will lead (in my map for sure). The layout is also pretty classy to see , you know you are exploring a forgotten island haunted by freaks and the music mixes epicness and mystery.

MAP06: The Forgotten Land

42:52 | 98% Kills | 98% Items | 100% Secrets

A definite step down in difficulty, which is fine by me. Not that this one's a pushover or anything. It's got one of the biggest arena battles of the WAD, in the memorable one-two punch of blue key caves. Fortunately (on HMP at least) there's a bevy of ammo and health, and lots of room to maneuver, so the overwhelming numbers are never too overwhelming. Perfectly acceptable, since honestly, I'm playing this for fun, not to get my butt kicked. The natural detailing on display is fantastic; the buildings are pretty spare but still look nice. Somehow I missed 6 monsters; have no idea where they could be. (I even took a look using IDDT, which is how I stumbled onto the megasphere secret.) The ending itself was a bit of a letdown; all that space and I was worried there'd by a ginormous battle. But no, it's just a lone cyber and a dozen imps? Oh, and that music track was fantastic, a good complement to an epic map that nonetheless plays relatively casually.

MAP06 The Forgotten Land

Another reason I don't like hearing the cyber roar at the start? The more maps I hear it happen, the less suspense I feel.

Well, I was wondering when JC would show up to the orange party. Given I didn't know who the previous author was either too (that was yugiboy/The_Trigger? Never knew that). Anyways, this is definitely an open map, a fun one at that, and the going has gotten much rougher. Lots more meat to grind through, but none to make you feel all inundated everywhere you turn. See, that's the kind of slaughter I like. I say it multiple times, and I must say it yet again. Note that one secret has an invulnerability in one location on ITYTD/HNTR, but is closer to the center of the secret in the other settings, which is weird, but whatever. The aforementioned cyber appears in a circular arena fight at the end, a worthy exit challenge with imps and other snipers. Oh and I got that megasphere. >:D

"yourselft"

20 hours ago, Yugiboy85 said:

Well, i mean, that is the theme of the wad afterall :/ 

 

What would someone expect from a wad called "tangerine" nightmare? Haha

I know but I'm not too keen of this kind of ideas tbh, I prefer when the visuals are more varied and to a certain extent they were so far. I think that the various orange walls and flat tend to blend with each a bit too, Doom color palette is limited in this regard. Maybe MAP04 was just giving me a bad impression because the lighting was rather flat and so the theme looks more dull. On the other hand I liked MAP05.

MAP05: I really like the starting outdoor area, good use of lighting. The level is a more linear romp compared to the others but it was nicely done with some reuse of few spaces and the glimpses of the upcoming areas are always a good thing.

map05 fda

glboom+ / uv pistol starts / saveless

i enjoyed this overall. good midi, nice texturing and design - especially the reusing of previous areas and foreshadowing. didnt like the cyberdemon fight; theres no incentive to jump down (e.g. soulsphere is given to you, instead of being down below with the cyber) so you can just cheese him. could have just levelled the arena to flat there and then. the demon/arachnotron trap is also really nasty with a chance of some blockmap bugs getting you bitten to death.

MAP05: Orange Juice

99% kills, 4/5 secrets

Despite the appearance of the top-down layout, this one is actually a very linear map, albeit with a lot of windows to other areas and eventually returning to the start. It works well though, as the fights are pretty well orchestrated. I really liked the demon/arachnatron fight, good combo not commonly seen, and the red key one had some nice teeth to it. The cyberdemon fight is a big misstep though, he's just begging to be killed safely from above. One thing I didn't like was the amount of silent triggers and instant floor changes - the one on the red is misleading (I didn't notice the floor drop so I thought I could run backwards, nope) and would've been better with at least an audible indicator. And the floors that switch from going up to going down for the exit, why did those have to be instant instead of slowly moving?

map06 fda

glboom+ / uv pistol starts / saveless

extremely enjoyable map. only criticisms would be the midi being a little too placid, and the end fight being a little bit soft-pedalled - felt like some of the monsters from the BK(?) big fight couldve been moved over to the finale :D

MAP06: The music track is beautiful, it puts a strong mood to the map and it's very charming. The level starts quite slow but it gets more intense as you progress, giving you some good old-school slaughter battles. The looks is less sophisticated compared to the other levels but the landscape si very well designed. And the ending fight is cheesable, you can shoot the switch from the furthest point and jump immediately on the raising platforms to reach the exit room.

Just now, gaspe said:

MAP06: And the ending fight is cheesable, you can shoot the switch from the furthest point and jump immediately on the raising platforms to reach the exit room.

hah! very nice for speedrunning :D

map07: Goetia - Roofi
zdoom2.8.1, uvmax, pistol start, no saves, first time played

OMG! What a huge, epic caverns based map and for me the pinnacle of the wad. It took me a fair while to work out where to go and to find all of the enemies, items and secrets. While there is a fair amount of non linearity, progression relies on collecting the keys in a strict order red, blue and green. Only a few areas contain damaging floors.

None of the traps or fights are particularly brutal, especially if you are careful and clear out as much as possible as you go and have found all of the secrets. You can clear out a third of the monsters before you collect the first key. At the end where a slaughter like amount enemies are released, you can reasonably safely take care of them by funneling them at either of the northeast or northwest areas of the main hub. You can be surprised with unexpected foes from time to time.

There is a vast secret hunt on the map. There are also unofficial secrets that must be found for a uvmax. With 11 secrets, it will take some time for you discover them all. This map took me well over an hour to investigate and find all secrets and I enjoyed every minute.

Note an important non official secret on this map that allows you to lower the invulnerability sphere and lower the bars to the switch that releases the cyberdemon guarding one of the secrets. You must have

06

Really enjoyed this map back when I first played it in the beta. It's cool how certain parts can be rushed past and bleed into one big mess in a complex layout, without the usual nuisances of monsters getting lost places. The invul at the end also makes for a fun rush. The last fight has been tweaked since the first version. Now it's more interesting. Back in the beta it was only the cyb + two arachnotrons, and that's it. I like how generous the rockets/plasma are in this map. It turned out to be a pretty exciting ending -- I caught on a railing while trying to dodge a rev rocket. :) 

3 minutes ago, tmorrow said:

map07: Goetia - Roofi
zdoom2.8.1, uvmax, pistol start, no saves, first time played

OMG! What a huge, epic caverns based map and for me the pinnacle of the wad. It took me a fair while to work out where to go and to find all of the enemies, items and secrets. While there is a fair amount of non linearity, progression relies on collecting the keys in a strict order red, blue and green. Only a few areas contain damaging floors.

None of the traps or fights are particularly brutal, especially if you are careful and clear out as much as possible as you go and have found all of the secrets. You can clear out a third of the monsters before you collect the first key. At the end where a slaughter like amount enemies are released, you can reasonably safely take care of them by funneling them at either of the northeast or northwest areas of the main hub. You can be surprised with unexpected foes from time to time.

There is a vast secret hunt on the map. There are also unofficial secrets that must be found for a uvmax. With 11 secrets, it will take some time for you discover them all. This map took me well over an hour to investigate and find all secrets and I enjoyed every minute.

Note an important non official secret on this map that allows you to lower the invulnerability sphere and lower the bars to the switch that releases the cyberdemon guarding one of the secrets. You must have

 

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1. visited the cave system secret where you find the "special key".
2. visited the secret area on the east side of the map where the bfg is located. The secret involves jumping across to another part of the fortressand climbing up into a room with a mancubus and some items.
3. visited a non secret area guarded by a mancubus. In the hub room, drop into the southeast area with a megasphere. Take the lift up to the ledge where a super shotgun is located. Collect the super shotgun to trigger a trap that opens an area with cacodemons and a pain elemental. If you go back up to the hub area you and approach a large pillar you can climb up on. On the right hand side below is a newly opened ledge that you can run onto. Move inside to find a mancubus guarding a rocket launcher, box of rockets and a backpack. When you get close you will see a candle lower.

 

The arachnotron's area is tagged as secret so the secret with the lowering bars is not really an non-official secret. :p

1 hour ago, Roofi said:

The arachnotron's area is tagged as secret so the secret with the lowering bars is not really an non-official secret. :p

Fair enough but there are some tricky steps that must be completed leading up to having access to the arachnotron area!

MAP05 - “Orange Juice” by Chaos

gzDoom – UV – pistol start/saves

Sorry, not my favorite. Fairly hard with A LOT of rocket ammo in tight spaces. Blah. The pop up rev horde with another AV behind them was probably the most infuriating of the traps. I could handle most of the others, although just barely. I died plenty at first attempts and decided to just go back to pistol starts and saving again. The cyberdemon fight at the end felt out of place and very uninspired. The first half of the map was good but lost me during the last.

Still though, things look great. Lots of good detail and a few set pieces that stood out as larger and more open than the rest of the map but I could see this possibly being the weakest of the bunch. Funny exit though, heh.

MAP06 - “The Forgotten Land” by JCD

gzDoom – UV – continuous/no saves

Spooky music for another fantastic looking map (look at those steps!) that felt like it would start slow but then throws an AV at you straight away. Whoa! This one had some real punch to it at times. Large hordes of enemies.

Some fights were cheesable while others required some real quick thinking and fast footwork. Specifically the BSK fight in the caves. That was a real treat. Loved it. I was handling things alright enough at first with the PG and then I stumbled past some spiders, running out of room to breath. When all of the sudden, what do I find straight ahead of me?? An invulnerability sphere!! Hot damn! Switched to my RL immediately, carved my way through to the AV's and then focused on the cybercow before time ran out. What a blast. Literally. Fun, fun, fun.

The ending however, was a complete let down. At first it looks like another huge fight with a big circular area... but I shot a switch and ran inside. That was that. Huh. Guess I shouldn't move so fast?

MAP07: Goetia

1:39:08 | 100% Everything

Hot damn. I mean... wow. First off, that MIDI coupled with the cavernous map and spooky midtex messages was creepy. Secondly, I can't believe I maxed this sucker! I got to the exit at 1:12, and spent the next 27 minutes sniffing out the rest of the secrets, fully not expecting I'd be able to do so. The scarlet key bit was really neat. And I knew I'd have to kill some arachnos to get the BFG (on account of this being MAP07; a pretty cool way to utilize that effect.) I did die once, I think it was to the first wave of baddies during the grand finale. I ended up hitting all the switches, then just running away into the upper levels and picking off what followed (easier said than done.) Thankfully, there was a lot of health lying around; probably too much, honestly. Heck, I made the mistake of grabbing both megaspheres at the end--before I found the spider room. As it was, I was still able to go back to the chapel for the soulsphere I left behind; I exited the map with all weapons and ammo and 200% health... but like 70% armor. Ah, well. What an absolute epic. Bravo.

MAP07 Goetia

Jesus that's a huge item count. Boy am I glad that that yellow nukage doesn't hurt either. There's several text messages scrambled in this level, giving off a sense of atmospheric doodad, and the level would make for some Eternal Doom style play. Actually, more so than that. I had to use markers here. Yep, nonlinear, full of secrets and items, gameplay is good when the combat is there. Those messages seem to have meaning, but much of them and the secrets actually can be ignored. Really, just get the keys, then try to go for the exit, only for Rocket Dongs to give you one final challenge. No, not him. There's these four switches in the main hub, and each one slaps quite a few more headaches your way, lots of enemies to fight. Oh, and don't forget the arch-duo that inevitiably has to pop up at the very end.

Did I say there were a few more headaches? In reality, I don't mean just those. The secrets are quite the trip, giving more of that Eternal Doom feel. One secret requires a "special" key, which turns out to be a scarlet key in a secret. Said scarlet key actually reminds me of a very specific level in Hellcore 2.0, which has three keys that are like that, keys that are just protruded flats that you can simply "collect" and automatically earn stuff by finding a different secret later on. The second thing to note is that this is MAP07, and the mancubi here are much like the mancubi in Sunlust or the Commander Keens in Speed of Doom or Hellbound. You have to find each and every one of them. Doing so opens the way to several other locations that have writings on them. One is an invulnerability, the other is the way to the spider area, where the only arachnotrons are in place. Of course, the reward for such deeds is the meritorious BFG9000. What a trip, and what a level.

Map 07 : Goetia (Tangerine Nightmare)

Ok , I wll talk about my own map. it's certainly quite odd but I don't want to miss a map this month and I like posting layouts from Slade. :p
I will give a quite neutral description to not be considered as a megalomaniac.  :)

However , I consider this as my magnum opus , I took three months to build it . I never took so much time to make a map before. This is also my first contribution in a big and promising project.

Difficulty : medium

Let's begin with a little story I have prepared with the help of FranckFrag. You fell in a white bottomless hole to find yourself in a dark orange and large cavern with a forsaken stronghold. During your dangerous stroll in the flooded cave , you see a lot of dead marines with strange injuries. At the same time , you hear some voices overwhelming your mind. They entreat you to free them from a Malediction , they also say some enigmatic sentences. "Spiders are haunting me" , but which spiders? "Abominations are hiding and I can hear them" whereas you can't hear anything and you don't know what those abominations look like. Whatever , you know there is something really wrong here , You also feel more the presence of the ultimate enemy which is at the origin of this nightmare as long as you progress . You will maybe meet him at the end of the tunnel leading to the darkness...

This map is really complex and long compared to the previous ones. A lot of foes await you to cut you into pieces but the level is not really hard if you search secrets. Hopefully , some are pretty straightforward to find although there are very cryptic but useful secrets. Whatever , if you don't like searching them , they are not mandatory to finish the level. Finding the bfg or the secret chapel is equivalent as a big sidequest in a rpg game. It's optional for sure but will make your character a lot more powerful if you finish it !

A little note , when you reach the "art exposition" near the green key , a painting is named "Pandemonium" to make a reference of the next level.:)

map08: Pandemonium - franckFRAG
zdoom2.8.1, uvmax, pistol start, no saves, first time played

An icon of sin map. I don't like them in general because they force you to play at a faster pace than what I'd prefer and success can sometimes be determined by rng. You get unlucky archvile and pain elemental spawns, bad luck. Can't work out which enemies spawned to begin with for a uvmax, bad luck. This map is a nasty icon of sin map because there are 4 monster spawners and it takes several minutes to get to the exit which means that 100's more enemies have spawned in that time. If you play the map in prboom+ the spawns clump up (even at complevel 9, refer to lirui1001's post) making the map a little easier. In zdoom no clumping occurs and the map is more difficult and can be quite frustrating. I'm not sure how other source ports fare.

If you cheat and idclip into the center of tall tower in the middle of the arena you will notice the boss brain has been reskinned from Romero to another persons head, I'm not sure whose.

After collecting some items in the starting area you enter the building for a fun fight with a roomful of zombiemen, demons and a handful of archviles that is easy enough with bfg. Then you press switches to open up the way to the icon of sin arena where the difficulty rises substantially.

After dropping into the arena you have to blast your way up a long pathway that winds slowly up to the exit. There are mid tier enemies along the way as well as spawn points that continuously spew fresh monsters like pain elementals, archviles etc. You are slowed down by walls of meat and slow moving lifts and a constant influx of floating enemies that are coming from the spawn points in the arena. Despite well placed bfg blasts all along the way it takes several minutes to get to the top where 3 cyberdemons and 2 archviles and a wall of mid tier enemies await, trying to prevent you from actioning the 3 switches you need to open the way to the exit.

The 4 monster spawners don't awake until your first shot so one decent strategy is to drop into the arena and do the infighting dance for a while. You can even go a fair way up the path and drag several of the enemies back down into the arena to clear some of the pathway. Then make your way to the invulnerability secret before firing your first shot to remove the blocking revenant. Once you've waken the spawners and collected the invulnerability, you can race up the pathway and get as far as the second set of stalling lifts at best before it runs out. After that I have no idea what to do next. Returning back down the path to collect ammo down there and megaspheres seems to put you in a worse situation since another 300 enemies or so will have spawned by the time you get back. Continuing onward up the path seems to be the way to go but your execution, skill and speed have to be at a high level to survive.

After seeing what was involved and doing some basic map analysis, I gave this map one decent attempt and died near the top of the path as the first cyber was appearing. The map starts with 638 enemies but there were well over 1200 by the time I went down. With 4 monster spawners spitting out new spawns every couple of seconds, that's like 2 per second or 120 per minute increase in monsters. You can figure that in 120 spawns there is likely to be some archviles and pain elementals to deal with that add to the enemy spawn rate. That's pretty much beyond my kill rate and skill to overcome.

im completely stuck on 07 - i have the BSK & RSK and i can see GSK but the (apparent) way to it is blocked off with wooden beams with an orange -> in the floor just in front of them... any tips? :(