The DWIronman League dies to: Doom 64 for Doom 2

8 hours ago, HexaDoken said:

I've decided I will no longer participate in Ironman runs. I've been considering dropping out ever since Alfonzo's musings about officially making Ironman single-sitting, but wanted to wait with deciding until the rules were officially updated... but with some... things, that recently happened on my end, I don't really think it matters anymore. I'm just not feeling it.

 

Sorry, @Steve D! It looks like it's just you for a while.

 

^{heh it's my 30th post and a title update. that's kinda ironic, don't you think.}

 That's too bad. Hope all is well.

And don't sorry too much for SteveD. He'll have Beginner to keep him company.

Here is my run. Category 3. Died in Map 05, 42/75 kills.

pegleg_dwi_d64d2.lmp.zip

At the point I died, I was clocking in at a time like 1:13:10 (I may have the seconds off, or the minutes off by a couple, but it was right around there). At the rate I was going (which was at around 20 minutes for Maps 03 and 04 and 05 was on track for that), had I somehow managed to survive this mapset, I was on track to have had to play for almost 9 hours (and that would be a steady pace with no breaks, both of which are probably not realistic). Starting at 2 AM and playing straight to 11 AM is not something I would counsel anyone to try.

I was killed by a Hell Knight that I had decided to rush, gambling that the next SSG blast would be the end of it. A tip: that's not a wise gamble with under 10% health. That's generally a poor gamble anyway, but the low health just made it that much glaringly worse. Suitepee once stated (I'm paraphrasing him) that caution is a good thing to practice in Ironman runs--I obviously didn't follow that advice when faced with that Hell Knight.

Overall, in practice runs, I had managed to make it farther in Map 05, and I had a plan for dealing with the rest of it and surviving to Map 06. Oh well, as one of Murphy's Laws of Combat clearly states: "No plan survives the first contact intact." (I thought it was "No plan survives fire, but it turns out I was mixing up it and another of the laws, "Don't be conspicuous, it draws fire.") 

Oh well, the bottom line is, I'm quite happy with my run. During my practice runs (I would save in Map 05 in order to practice that), I had made it through to Map 06, but had only made it a little in. So, I was aiming to survive to Map 06, but I wasn't going to be shocked if I didn't survive Map 05. In fact, during my run, there were some hairy points toward the end of Map 04 that I managed to get out of, but I was wondering if I would make it out of there. I actually ended up being braver at the end of Map 04 during my run than I had planned to be. So go me for that.

I had a lot of fun playing these maps. I found the difficulty level to ramp up steadily, but in an approachable way. I wouldn't want to play the maps from pistol start, but continuous play isn't unreasonable. In fact, the first time I played the maps for practice, which was blind (never had played Doom 64 or Doom 64 for Doom 2), I made it to Map 02, which I was happy about.

I checked the Doom Wiki about this mapset and all I could find was an article on the original Doom 64, but I am rather amazed at how faithful the layouts were to the original game. And, as a mapper, I have studied some of the maps to try to figure out how the mapper got the vanilla engine to do some of the things it does.

Here's the highlight for my official run, to make sure it's up for a while since I don't have a demo for it.

It's a little sad to see the leaderboards in the OP not being updated reliably. Saw some older threads where even the winner was't present in the leaderboard, clearly indicating that it's not up to date.

Is this not a harbinger of oblivion and decay?

I burnt again (pronouce with Caleb's voice).

The very end of MAP09. He should have died, but it was me instead.

I've watched Altima Mantoid's Doom 64 walktrough a bit undefined time ago, so I'd name it Category II demo.

Literally in love with these music tracks.

dwid64d2.zip

20 hours ago, Da Werecat said:

It's a little sad to see the leaderboards in the OP not being updated reliably. Saw some older threads where even the winner was't present in the leaderboard, clearly indicating that it's not up to date.

 

Is this not a harbinger of oblivion and decay?

For the last few months, Alfonzo has been pretty bad about keeping up the leaderboard after the first few days of the month, blaming it on being busy. (Then how does Naza seemingly have time to watch the demos and keep up the unofficial leaderboard?)

In all fairness, though, Alfonzo usually gets the leaderboard updated within the first few days of the following month. While he hasn't done it every month, he usually does (at least, in my experience). Granted, he gave up last month, but he's usually better than that.

So, I don't think it's a harbinger of anything darker to come.

Here's my run, category 2.
 

I've never experienced the "real" Doom 64, but I've played the Absolution TC many years ago with the Doomsday Engine and liked it a lot. It felt like a good mixture of Doom and Quake with its particular, dismal, unsettling atmosphere. Some of the monster designs, unique to this game, were appealing to me, such as the Demon and Cacodemon with chains on its arms, while others looked even goofier than Doom II's (Mancubus, Arachnotron).
As for Doom 64 For Doom II, I've played it a few weeks back and enjoyed it greatly as well. It is exactly what it says on the tin, i.e. a faithful rendition of Doom 64 with classic Doom II assets (and a nicely done custom boss just to end things properly). There are some maps I'm not willing to play again for now, such as 24, but other than that, the pack is really solid. There's a lot of nice gameplay ideas in there (puzzles, combat scenarios, etc.).

Props to Midway and to all who participated in creating Doom 64 For Doom II.
 

D64D2-Ironman-DamnTheseCrushers-wh.zip