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dobu gabu maru

The DWmegawad Club plays: Eternal Slumber Party

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I feel NoisyVelvet will be the only one to complete all the maps, without resorting to god mode, resurrection, or give health commands even.

 

The Phantasy Star series had Espers long before FF6 did.  But I digress.

 

Map 31: Unusual Frag-filled Odyssey (cheats used)

    This map is the embodiment of repetitive, grindy gameplay.  When I first sampled this map, it didn't take long to catch on to the apparent gimmick.  Go through many rooms of the same enemy type, hit switch at end, archviles spawn at entry point of wing, one layer of center releases more of same enemy type, pick up bigger unlimited ammo weapon (sometimes).

 

Millenia: "This is boring."

 

  Got through 2, maybe 3 wings before deciding this wasn't fun for me.  Was especially not liking the idea of grinding through the cyberdemon wing.  Ended the session.  This would have been the end were it not for a freakish idea that popped into my brain some days later.  What if instead of grinding down everything myself, I got cyberdemons from the cyberdemon wing to do the work?

 

  Thus, began a god mode assisted, tour of this wacky map with mobile weapons of mass destruction.  Later, I would come to regard this as a poor life choice.  "Eternal" is a fitting word to describe my completion time.  I terminated archviles with extreme prejudice but left most of the killing to cybers.  Was also armed with foreknowledge of which parts close off at a certain point.

  There were the entertaining moments such as fetching more cybers when cleaning out the revenant and arachnotron wings, as well as a few others.  I could have done this segment without cheats but this was more entertaining for me.  The eruption of greater violence, when it came, would have got me.  Sure, I was being a dirty cheater but I still keep an eye out for how things would go without them.  So many archviles, aaah.  313 megaspheres on this map but fails to matter to a corpse.  I think dealing with all the resurrected monsters killed off another 6 or so cybers but I wasn't keeping close count at this point.  By the time all the lesser monsters were put down again, I had gone through 12 of the 16 chambers of cyberdemons.  Next set of actions is going in the hit the switch there, then luring them out for the further violence to come.

 

  I was a bit shocked I hadn't quit out of boredem yet but this late in the map, a new enemy is introduced.  They look like cacodemons but are really Keith the cave Baron's genetically modified murder cacodemons.  The other demons wrote him off as more dumb muscle as ineffectual as a lamppost in wide open areas.  Keith possessed an unnatural intelligence which he put to use in scientific pursuits.  His scarlet devils are fast and belch out ordinance on the level of a Touhou or Dodonpachi enemy.  What's bullet hell doing in my Doom?  Ahem.  The revenants that taunted him sure had second thoughts after an encounter with these monstrosities.

 

  One invulnerability won't be enough to clear out the several hundred archviles lying in wait though it is still welcomed as a start.  I had some 25 or so cyberdemons (in various states of health) stomping around to start; amused me that none survived the storm of spiderdemons, archviles, and other monsters.  Meticulously cleaned out every wing of waiting archviles before starting the last task of the map.  Having several hundred archviles loose would not be a good thing, god mode or no.  They would throw me everywhere and undo all the previous killing; the monster counter had already exceeded 12000.

 

  The last trip is simple enough but so repetitive.  Hit a switch, run to platform that lowers that holds the next switch.  Repeat 16 times.  Why, dammit?  Oh, each step releases more cybers but they're simple enough to evade if one doesn't feel like fighting them.  My sanity was mostly shattered when the exit was reachable and I left without finishing off the stragglers that were still alive.

 

  Whatever feelings I have about this map, it sure made an impression.  I'm never playing this map again.

 

 

Edited by Crusader No Regret

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oh wait now I remember MAP31, probably my least favorite in that whole set, sorry but it was literally the one map I skip and I rarely, if ever, skip maps in any set.

5 hours ago, Crusader No Regret said:

The Phantasy Star series had Espers long before FF6 did.  But I digress.

Honestly I don't even remember those, unless they were only in PS4, which is the only core Phantasy Star game I haven't seen yet. Then again, so far I have not enjoyed the Phantasy Star series.

 

Hello Grandia II reference!

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MAP24 - “64lemons MAP01”

I like it when slaughtermaps are this size, its just right! Add in TODisms (im coining this), and you got yourself an example of an enjoyable small slaughtermap. The maps progression is not that hard to figure out, but it still left me satisfied when i beat it! Visual are easy on the eyes too.

Im not really fond of the music tracks keep getting reused tho, gets pretty old imho.

Some screenies:

xAJOcqb.png
wSs3mIp.png

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+++ Mayhem 17

 

And much respect in advance for anyone who can pistol start uvmax mayhem17's map11 by Killer5.

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19 hours ago, Crusader No Regret said:

I feel NoisyVelvet will be the only one to complete all the maps, without resorting to god mode, resurrection, or give health commands even.

 

I've been making sure to chunk out blocks for this each night.  I use saves and stuff on long maps.

 

Eternal Slumber Party: MAP24 - "64lemons MAP01"
Playtime: 45 mins (prb+ cl2 uv)


Another basic, short symmetrical map.  Not much to say here.  This one has a harder start than map22 though, and it opens up the play area at the top of the stairs, but it's sorta similar otherwise.


Eternal Slumber Party: MAP25 - "Nina Dobrev 2"
Playtime: 52 mins (prb+ cl-1 uv-saves)

 

The second half of Nina Dobrev, which is thicker than her first half.  Nothing really stands out to me here from other ToD maps, except maybe the automap quirks: The layout has orthogonal components, but it looks like they were slightly melted and then turned 20 degrees clockwise for some reason.  There's plenty of ammo on the map, but I ate up all my rockets first and 2/3rds into the map, I didn't have enough to eat through a fight without resorting to cyber infight damage here.  It was the bridge that decends into a lock-in hallway with hellknights backed by a couple cybers, which separates you from the cell stockpile before it.  There's also an inescapable pit around this area, but I doubt it's gonna be an issue for people, I was playing with saves anyways.

 

 

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26 minutes ago, dobu gabu maru said:

 

Add pluses to your vote ya dingdong

 

+++ Mayhem '17

 

...

...

and +++ Hell Revealed 2

Heh

+++ Super mayhem 17 merio ftw

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MAP19 - “Cassie Steele”

This is such a cool map. TOD transcend into one of the best doom mappers in my book after this :D

Instead of the normal bfg fueled slaughterfest we got used to in this set, this is non linear adventure map, and its a darn good one. The detailing pairs perfectly with the music, creating a dreamy, surreal mood and feel. Gameplay involves carefully shooting the mid tier doom 2 monsters and hitscanners, as the precise health given and the lack of armor could make any bad move fatal, but somehow the map keeps its adventures feeling. Non linearity is superb here, with the map connecting itself with ledges, shortcuts, passageways... All the good lighting, sector machines/buildings, architecture all add up to make this map a experience that will not be leaving your memory any time soon.

So cool! (yea i cant stop praising it :P)

Map was originally made for Final doom the way id did.

Screenies! (But you can only do it justice by playing it):

GYIXjiU.png
R5D0oJ3.png
n0G9AwG.png
eoOQua5.png
Tpe6rmW.png

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8 minutes ago, Grain of Salt said:

Swim With The Whales, Combat Shock 2, Italo Doom

 

OMG! After what ESP did to us this month! Here's a Haiku describing these wads.

Sadistic mappers.
These wads rip us a new one.
Oh my butt is sore.

 

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3 minutes ago, riderr3 said:

To honor the memory of TeamTNT member, Jim Flynn who recently passed away , I will vote even more for Master Levels.

+++ Master Levels
+++ The Standard E1 Community Project

Hmm, that sounds right too...

Wait a second, wasnt Jim Flynn "Titan" series only 5 maps? Then we could combine it with mayhem 17, because i remember mayhem 17 wasnt a full 32 level megawad.

If thats the case:

+++ Super mayhem 17 and "Titan" series

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quick update on my absence: yeah, i totally went against my word, but March turned out to be.... busier than  usual. Not enough time for ToD maps anyway, so I'm sorry for that. FWIW, I've slowly been playing along at my own leisure and i DO intend to finish the set. Anyway, don't care what wins but Mayhem 17 sounds cool, so

 

 

+++Mayhem 17

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wow.  i... i did it...  my chest feels several times lighter now.  I contracted an illness and started coughing up metallic flavored phlem over the last couple days, but I unjokingly feel better and relaxed.  I'll say more on the 30th.

edit: i'm talking about getting through ESP.

edit2: i mean literal chest cold irl; above could be interpreted figuratively.  post made hastily, during a triumphant brain-high.

 

 

+++Super Mayhem 64

edit3: nevermind, for some reason i thought it was close between A.L.T and Mayhem but I only see one vote, nm i'm just dumb all around.

 

I'm gonna lighten up on the Doom for a while.  I'm just pulling a NuMetalManiac and throwing a vote on something I already played, despite not being a regular, because it might be fun to actually play something like A.L.T. alongside the club after another month.

Edited by NoisyVelvet

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Gotta finish Dholes! Can i make it? (3000 mons in!)

MAP26 - “Ben Stein’s Money”

This is just weirddddddd, and i dont think its the good kind of weird to me. Those nazi textures, that music thats genuinely horrible as oppose to the "crazy" degrassi music, and gameplay that's so easy it rubs me on the wrong side :P Maybe its because of its origin as a speedmap thats doing it, because the few cool design choices wont save it. All welp, at least it was short and fast.

I kinda like these names for some reason. Sure, they are totally random, but when i pronounce them they fit!

Some screenies:

TGepf57.png
TNu0Nom.png

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Boy this one sure died.

 

MAP20: Double Imp Act

 

This one was actually pretty enjoyable, despite 640 monsters (which I suppose can actually be considered on the low-end for this mapset) it's pretty dang easy, lots of small fry intermixed with some cacos, barons and cybers, all stacked up like cordwood in tight spaces to be easily blown apart with the BFG. Things are still a little hairy at the start with the lack of armor and needing to parkour on some tiny sector bumps to grab resources outside, but it's just enough to give a bit of vigor to the proceedings. The completely Doom 1 bestiary combined with the old-school 'reality' design (sector toilets!) makes me wonder if this is a very early TOD map.

 

Cleared everything out, couldn't find the exit though...?

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Double Imp Act was quite fun, however after killing everything it took me a few minutes to get the last key.

 

I guess I don't need to talk about "sense of location" for this one. If the theatre theme doesn't make it through eventually, you've probably never been to one. This map felt somewhat DukeNukem-ish to me. Shooting grates open, activating small objects that are supposed to resemble something you'd expect to find in a theatre and such.

 

Gameplay is pretty simple around here, and most of this map's monster count is lower tier "fodder" with the occasional cybie thrown in to keep things interesting. You BFG all the visitors out of the place with impunity and you shall win, that's the gist of it. I didn't find any sort of "standout fight" in here, because it's all relatively similar overall, except for maybe the barons on the toilet. Ousting the other customers out of this place made me feel a bit like an asshole though, especially interrupting the barons at whatever they were doing before I fried them left a bit of an evil grin on my face.

 

All things considered it's not a hard map by any stretch of the imagination, but compared to other maps in this megawad it is a lot more detailed as far as "micro detailing is considered. Most maps up to this point have been painted with a broader brush, sans "Cassie Steele" I suppose. I am looking forward to double impse act

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All of you attempting to play this in good faith with the usual DWMC format are absolute heroes, as the WAD is thoroughly unsuited to it. Regarding my comments, I've had the benefit of having played everything here before (except maybe m33?), both because I've spent time with ESP itself before and because I played a great deal of what it contains prior to being compiled here. Not sure how far I'll get with this, since I'm looking at this more as a retrospective and general commentary on ToD's mapping more than as an examination of particular maps, so I'll try to take a more general tack in the likely case I only write anything about a handful of the maps.

 

Map 01 -- Degrassi

An expat from CC4, eventually finding its home with a sometime community project brand of a rather different sort (though eventually with very similar sorts of drama and scheduling issues, ironically enough). Those familiar with CC4 itself likely won't have to puzzle too hard over why it didn't make it in despite being a map of considerable interest and craft (read: it would never have fit as we see it here, and ToD would never have wished to try to change it to make it more palatable to the mainstream), though as I recall at the time quite a few one-point arguments were made against it, ranging from the playtime involved in clearing it (while sort of sidestepping the issue of difficulty per se) to the fact that it doesn't use any of the now well-known CC4 texture pack, though the devil's advocate in me wants to say that it somehow still seems to look the part, what with its casual juxtaposition of very dirty/gritty textures and colors with lots of striking primary colors and such. While the map's eventual release here avoids most of the bittersweet possibilities of similar stories (D-D come back! <3 etc. etc.), it is perhaps interesting fodder for forum sociologists wanting to play with the notion of a very singular creative voice being 'excluded' (or self-excluding, depending on one's preferred spin) from a collection meant to gather and showcase the wide variety of styles in the community on the grounds of being too outré for consumption by "the masses" (whoever that is), and is perhaps a useful point of reference for current projects facing similar decisions with certain of their submissions (read: literally no current case of "this doesn't fit" I can think of is anywhere near as extreme as Degrassi's lack of fit with the rest of CC4. :D ).

 

This origin also means it's one of the more recent maps in ESP chronologically if I'm not mistaken, and as a map 01 it's quite fitting in that it is an excellent posterchild for ToD's general style, or at least his general style circa a few years ago. The veritable carpeting of opposition and unbending trench warfare hardship in the combat from beginning to end is an obvious talking point, of course, but equally of note is the incredibly elaborate fractal structure of the level itself, incredibly rich in vertical progression, interlocking and interconnecting in many whimsical ways, and with a fluid hand for striking and memorable spaces ranging from the enclosed/claustrophobic to the much more spatially grandiose. Aesthetically the idiom is entirely ToD's own, something like the texture sense of abstract wonderment of PWADing eras long, long gone by colliding with the imposing sense of scale and repeated structural motifs of a more modern period. The music is.....something else, more abrasive and harrowing than all of its denizens combined, I'd say. An important point is that this elaborate structure is not just cosmetic (though it is cosmetically very potent in paces); actually travelling the level, wholly independent of the monsters, is a tall task, requiring a strong navigational sense and an acceptance of a certain degree of trial/error and abject 'game-y-ness' in searching for progression, in some senses a 'vintage' design sensibility for which the author will make no apologies.

 

Looking at this map, and indeed many others in this collection and in ToD's wider oeuvre, I get the strong sense that it/they are built primarily as art pieces rather than from a gameplay-first standpoint, being thingplaced largely after the fact; most of the really fascinating aspects of the creation concern structure and traversal rather than combat per se. I would say that actual monster placement and fight design in Degrassi does not seem to have had a great deal of thought put into it, at least in comparison to styles favored by other notable 'challenge-oriented' maps/sets of the modern era. To cut to the heart of it, the great majority of the content here is an extreme version of "monsters in front of you, control/gate your forward movement, budget stock accordingly"; the flavor of the balance and the play elide far more from austere item/monster ratios than from specific placements (though the weird structure naturally makes for some unusual engagements) or especially from 'choreography', which is largely absent.

 

Owing to ToD's intuitive understanding of the game's physical minutiae and his own sort of exceptional horse-blinder'd level of skill playing the game, it is still highly (and occasionally amazingly) functional from a balance standpoint, but the argument I want to make is that it is, by and large, not particularly nuanced or kinetic or tactical or imaginative in the way that many other hard maps or hard map styles are often built up to be by their fans and admirers. Let's be clear: for the most part it is a goddamned straightfaced and straightlaced grind, proudly and unapologetically so, meant for players skilled enough and with enough taste for being immersed in this type of tantric long game to not automatically see this as a categoric drawback (and, perhaps, for the most stalwart and patient of mere mortal adventurers). So goes much of ESP.

 

Map 02 -- Castle of The Damned

While I will stand by my assertion in the previous 'hot take' paragraph that the vast majority of ToD's combat is very simplistic in design and concept (consistent execution on the player's end always being another matter!), periodically to a fault, this by no means should be interpreted to mean that he can/will only do one thing. CoTD here, with 'only' 700+ monsters, is the flipside of the coin to some of the behemoth meat-plowing odysseys to come later ("Degrassi" and its closest stylistic siblings are somewhere around the midpoint of this scale, incidentally). Only around a hundred of that compliment is part of the main game here, the vast majority are a sort of capricious and pragmatically pointless explosion of trashmonster confetti that can be dealt with at the end or simply ignored, if the player prefers.

 

Action here centers on a thin thing balance, using frequent cyberdemons and others as unabashed 'doors with health' in the context of generally narrow, linear passageways that will give you a new respect for that generally smirking turn of phrase. Engagements are not complex, but they require consistently clean/excellent execution in order or to eventually 'beat the margin' and obtain escape velocity, a challenge all the more insidious in that it may not be apparent to the uninitiated that this is the case when first receiving one's kit. This is another common trope in ToD's design (both in terms of maps focusing on it in toto or as segments of larger levels), and should often assumed to be the case to a greater or lesser degree unless some other style of balance is patently obvious. For my part, I find the framing here largely joyless and flavorless, though as it's a much more focused map it is easier to take the argumentative stance that it has significant potential value as a skill-builder (a goodly number of ToD's designs play more or less like exercise routines in practice), as well as an interesting little puzzlebox for players interested in 'action accounting' and who may not be intimately familiar with the source material.

 

Oh, yes, on that point, it's based on one of the most recognizable Quake E1 maps (indeed, assuming/requiring the player to know certain things about said map in the course of standard progression), of course. This idea and this particular Q1 map have received the same treatment in Doom on several other occasions; suffice to say that ToD's is immediately recognizable as his own. Much nicer music here, of course, when I actually played this compilation when it was newly released I ended up IDMUSing to this one a lot.

 

Map 03 -- Escaping the Spiral Labyrinth

This one reads like fairly close kin to "Degrassi" (esp. on the automap), and was presumably made roughly around the same time, though being slated for SF2013 from the get-go (again, presumably) it is perhaps to be expected that it's not quite as elaborate in progression, with more of an emphasis on sprawling fights in larger open areas and a more obviously linear route that tours past some even more grandiose surroundings. While the interlock is not nearly as nuanced and progression has less of that winsome clever-for-the-sake-of-clever winsomeness to it, EtSL is an excellent showcase of transforming arenas and dramatic reveals of new areas, something which the more recent era of ToDstuff tends to excel at.

 

Because it is generally more spacious and thus naturally less slate-facedly tightly wound, I would generally say that this is more enjoyable to play moment-to-moment than Degrassi, allowing the player to inject a little more of his/her own personality into the proceedings and emphasizing more the joy of movement aspect of the game, though the usual/expected slant towards unrelenting meat-plowing excess in some of the interstitial segments (a number of the stairclimbs in this case) hurts pacing and blunts some of the force and wonder of more striking scenes and better fights. Nevertheless, certainly one of the stronger ToD-ian brawl-epics to be found in ESP, along with the mastodonic DHoles and the surprising The Room Below, and a good complement to some of the more adventure-oriented stuff from the 'anigaV' period in the third episode of the set.

 

Map 04 -- Rosewater Park

This map is a delight! With or without a sequence-break, at that. Very densely-populated, it's also very short and to-the-point in comparison to many of the other maps here, and while I tend to be an advocate for 'longform' maps in general and something of a skeptic concerning the oft-held 'argument from filler' one often sees on the topic, to be honest I think it tends to apply rather well to much of ToD's material, where the combination of scope plus his personal skills and predilections often seem to result in needlessly Sisyphean encounter design, particularly between marquee encounters. No such concern here, every part of the short sojourn has a very distinct and often clever idea behind it, including more proper setpiecery than has been seen thus far in the set, and with thing placement and item balance playing more active roles in flavoring the level progression than to simply mandate up front that one must play technically/mechanically well in order to succeed (though this is still the case in its own right, of course).

 

Mapstart is neat for requiring you to do something other than simply pick up a weapon and start shooting (another trait common in the author's mapping), and there's a nice little subtly comedic arc to (conventional) progress with intense but concise spates of violence in between, with a cheeky surprise or two (i.e. megasphere garden). Pure traversal is also playful here, progression in the middle section requiring some parkour/cat-burglar play for some extra personality. Lovely, lovely. Makes you wonder who the Park is reflecting here, James was waaaaaay too much of a 'nilla boi to have been the source of...this.

 

Map 05 -- DHoles

Another of the SF2013 entries, DHoles (dholes? Randolph?) is something like a cruder, more monolithic m03 with x100 spectacle and x100 cray-cray, even more direct in progression (though not without its odd quirks, ala the keycard towers) and even more grandiose in scope and scale, first and foremost a true megaslaughter for the sake of it. Though not without ebb and flow in its proceedings and careful to give a couple of other weapons at least some screentime, it's primarily an unabashed BFG-athon, and while utter carelessness in usage won't get you very far, the map is generally balanced to allow for far more indiscriminate (i.e. flexible i.e. fun) usage , the flavor of the experience shifting away from the constraints of monster/supply ratio and more towards mitigating tidal waves of creatures (or occasionally tunneling through veritable mountains of more defensive foes). It's certainly 'hard', and quite protracted, but because of its spatial character and the way it's framed I reckon it allows for a far wider variety of playstyles to be viable than some of the other levels here, and the quotient of 'filler' to 'prime' material seems reasonable and well checked given the demands of the physical scope, though of course if you've no taste for this kind of thing to begin with this will not only not change your mind but also probably redouble your strength in your convictions :) .

 

In terms of choreography this is again extremely simplistic, though that is usually not to its detriment in this case, IMO. I see this as an upscaled iteration of the older form of slaughter ala Hell Revealed and its lineage, where proceedings aren't framed so much in terms of particular discrete fights as they are in terms of conquest of larger areas initially held by entrenched enemies, with the player initially carving foothold space (which in this map's case is often, but not always, chosen for him/her) and then using the cascade of positional and other advantages that the space affords to take over further space and thus gain further advantages, eventually claiming an entire area before moving on to the next. That being said, dholes shines for not being fully segmented/static in this regard, the conceit of the central hub and a few other 'classic' twists (vulture viles + mountainous feast, etc.) to create a sense of tug of war between the enemies and player over the course of progression, enlivening proceedings significantly and injecting a sense of pacey-ness to what is indubitably something of a slog, albeit an engrossing one. Exhausting, but very enjoyable.

 

Oh, and the 'boss' must be seen to be believed. :D

 

Map 06 -- Smedley

This map is hot garbage, with very very little in the way of redeeming qualities. It's even ass-ugly, on top of everything else. Thanks "Quark."

 

Some ingenuous players may enjoy the somewhat weird start, I suppose ('scuse me, I need to get through here, don't mind my elbow), but for the most part this is a hackneyed and listless draft drawn from the already fairly shallow well dug out by Punisher and Go2It and similar maps, an endeavor clearly undertaken entirely for the sake of the meta-concept, with all else an afterthought. Astoundingly outstays its welcome, despite being comparatively short to max versus many of the set's other maps.

 

 

Sorry to end on a bit of bum note there, but I'm completely out of time. Those of you who still have a ways to go or have fallen behind (totally understandable in this WAD's case), do try to soldier on when you have the time, some of the best stuff in ESP is in the third episode (though in fairness, so is some of the worst. It's Art (TM), folks!).

Edited by Demon of the Well

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