What are you playing now?

Just now, galileo31dos01 said:

What kind of stuff are you looking for?

Nothing specific to be honest, just something you find good and entertaining, be it slaughter or not, my mind is empty.

28 minutes ago, seed said:

 

Nothing specific to be honest, just something you find good and entertaining, be it slaughter or not, my mind is empty.

NOVA: The Birth (one of my favourite community projects, mostly standard levels)

Requiem (old and full of sweet midis, tricks and such)

Survive in Hell (HR/HR2/KS in the eyes of JC, kind of a ripoff)

Dark Resolution 2008 (great setting, sharp difficulty raise)

Preacher (amazing concept with high replay value, funny setting)

Heroes' Tales (mixed bag, freelook recommended for map21)

Mano Laikas (functional maps, RL-centric)

Plutonia 2 (just an awesome megawad)

Dawn of The Dead (very good E1 replacement for Doom)

etc, etc, etc...

If you want more, here's my list of touched stuff in chronological order, all sorts of wads minus GZDoom or something of the kind. It got considerably longer throughout the last three years :P

Replaying every commercial wad. So far im running through The Master Levels via the menu interface by Zippy.

1 hour ago, galileo31dos01 said:

Mano Laikas (functional maps, RL-centric)

"Mano laikas" in Lithuanian means "my time". I just checked wad's author name and it isn't Lithuanian lol.

Currently wrapping up Eviternity, and then I'll be replaying BTSX Episode 1 and playing Episode 2 for the first time.

Shitty Oblige maps

Currently going through Thy Flesh Consumed.

8 hours ago, galileo31dos01 said:

NOVA: The Birth (one of my favourite community projects, mostly standard levels)

Requiem (old and full of sweet midis, tricks and such)

Survive in Hell (HR/HR2/KS in the eyes of JC, kind of a ripoff)

Dark Resolution 2008 (great setting, sharp difficulty raise)

Preacher (amazing concept with high replay value, funny setting)

Heroes' Tales (mixed bag, freelook recommended for map21)

Mano Laikas (functional maps, RL-centric)

Plutonia 2 (just an awesome megawad)

Dawn of The Dead (very good E1 replacement for Doom)

etc, etc, etc...

 

If you want more, here's my list of touched stuff in chronological order, all sorts of wads minus GZDoom or something of the kind. It got considerably longer throughout the last three years :P

Already played requiem, quite a long time ago actually. I'll check the other ones though.

Right now I'm in the middle of The Joy of Mapping 6's 4th episode.

The quality in this session is out of this world, I've enjoyed most of the maps, those that I enjoyed less are some secret maps, but I suppose there's a reason they're kept secret. Honorable mention goes to Dobu's E3M1 - A psychotic take on the original E3M1, you have to check it out!

Next up will be DBP07 + 08. After that, probably Birthday Bash.

Recently went through Doom 2 Reloaded. My feelings for it were mixed, it wasn't until the latter section of theoretically "Hell" maps that I was starting to get excited for the next map and so on. This isn't to say the earlier episodes were boring, but I have other preferences where ultra linearity/corridor-centric layouts aren't part of. Also, while the design is respectable for the most part, I found the "heavy conceptual" maps to be hit or miss:

- The timed invasion in map 09 is clearly explained in the text file (oh yea, read it, sound advice) and once I did my research, the concept seemed interesting. Unfortunately part of the execution didn't let me properly complete the map, due to a bottleneck of archviles and others on top of a lift and me basically BFG-less.

- Then the stealth map, where you had to reach to a end without making a single noise, even if at some point you are bombarded by revenants on a bridge. Took many tries to actually win, it's one you're far better with a proper route than going blind.

- The super secret map was utterly exhausting but very interesting throughout, except for one big draw which is a one-time vile-jump nearing the end that I'm sure everyone who played this screwed it up the first time. I wasn't aware of a (one-time) secret and saved after killing the vile, so I had to noclip, boo!. At the end, continuous players are highly rewarded, but from a pistol start, it can hurt to restart the next map.

- There's also map 24, which I couldn't take seriously. Put yourself in automap mode, imagine a giant square, now picture it as a labyrinth, except from start to end is all linear, straightforward, no dead ends, or else imagine the maze from Mount Pain but quadrupled. What the fuck...  

- Finally, the IoS map like usually that I care for about two or three tries or idclip inside the wall, although this time I forced myself to beat it legally. Didn't help that I was stubborn to end the map as fast as possible with monsters spawning in the floor and spiderdemons sniping from the right side, that I should have killed earlier but the plasma went to those new monsters. There was an alternate route which required some sr40 or 50 on pillars, but things kept blocking me from below and the aforementioned spiders always killing me, so that route was dismissed.

Anyways, it's a fine megawad specially for casual players, iwad lovers, even if the wad isn't that old-fashioned. Pistol starting is typically tricky at each start, encouraging to move around skipping dudes you can leave for later, but the secrets can turn drastically the gameplay from intense to a cakewalk. 

Now I'll be playing Mayan Mishap by Tango, mainly because I fell in love with the palette changes (indigo omg).

I was originally playing CRINGE! (by Mark Klem and Eric Sargent; 1994) but i decided to put the rest of it on hold, that is if i ever return to it, and i switched to playing Eviternity by Dragonfly (with help from others). It was originally released in 2018 on the 25th Anniversary of Doom's release (basically Doom's birthday) but the final version was released in February of 2019 and i'm totally loving it so far! I already wrote how much i'm loving it in the Eviternity release thread so i'm not going to repeat myself (well maybe a little bit ;) )

The OTEX textures are spectacular to look at, even in software rendering, which is what i usually play Doom in (for those of you who don't like software rendering). I tend to play through PWAD's kinda slow (especially megawads) so i'm sure this megawad will take me quite a while, which is fine by me as it's great so far.

Finished the Newgothic Movement series and going to start BTSX soon.

Good thing is, I have a small list of megawads waiting now too, after recently running out of ideas. Next up will be (in no specific order): Speed of Doom, Flotsam, Hanging Gardens, Moonblood (funny, I'm doing it backwards again, just like I did with skillsaw. Starting with Ancient Aliens and going all the way back to Aeternum :v. Sector 666 and something else remains though, but uh... I dunno if I'll actually get to those. Probably will, for curiosity's sake I guess.)

Speaking of which, impressive to see how skillsaw evolved over the years, yet even his early works carry his signature, in spite of the maps being all over the place at this time. I know for sure I'm gonna be really disappointed after Hanging Gardens, BigMacDavis played it recently (that's how I found it, but I think I've heard the name on DW before, just didn't know what it was) and it's such a fucking shame the project got canned. We would have needed some beefy PCs for the later maps me thinks, since stuff's quite fancy and it would've probably gotten even more so down the road. That is, if the gameplay was going to be the same in the rest of the maps, which never got made... Fancy slaughter and GZDoom? Sounds... intense xd.

Yesterday I finnished Mayan Mishap, one fantastic, savage wad in beautiful green-indigo (purple in heterosexual language) scheme. I encourage everyone to go taste this delicatessen if you haven't already. Be aware that UV is actually very violent, and some projectiles were sped up, so it can seem trickier at first.

Next is going to be Kama Sutra. I'm excited, Gusta's maps are among my favourites in Plutonia 2, but I know nothing about Method. This will be something for sure.

Finished chapter 1 in Eviternity in Eternity on UV, so far so very good! Haven't been this ecstatic over a new megawad in ages (then again I've got quite a few years worth to catch up on still).

I play Eviternity in Eternity on UV too. I haven't played anything good like this for years.

13 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

Finished chapter 1 in Eviternity in Eternity on UV, so far so very good! Haven't been this ecstatic over a new megawad in ages (then again I've got quite a few years worth to catch up on still).

Saw that you're trying to do it the saveless way. A worthy goal, I myself tried reducing the times I save during levels and kill off save scumming, and the later has been mostly successful, although I will probably never get rid of saving altogether, especially in long, exhausting maps.

Some people might have the nerve to do the same map over and over again until they get the result they want, but I neither have the patience nor the time to do this, it doesn't work for me, so I'm trying to improve in other ways. I'm glad I came a long way since I came back to classic Doom around 2015 or so, but I'm not too sure how much room is left to improve my skills, and I know for a fact I'll never be a great player, after all I've played games for decades or years before and I remained at the same skill level I was after playing them for a few months. All my friends however managed to dramatically improve at the same games, and I would be a terrible liar if I said that doesn't leave me with a really sour taste in my mouth since they were worse players than myself once upon a time, but I could never reach their level once they surpassed mine.

It bothers me, but I'll get used to the fact I'm always going to be a decent player at best eventually.

Not exactly a wad... and not Doom. 

I was looking for my original Doom64 cartridge and found coincidentally my old Turok cartridges instead, which I had long forgotten about, and got interested again. Instead of just testing, I went through the whole original game. Now I'm busy with the seeds of evil. I'll probably play the Evolution sequel as well, I liked the sniper rifle so much, hehe... good old times...

Playing the mapsets from megawad club month's (Dawn of the dead, Earth and Classic Episode) and in some random times, wadpak2.wad (reached E1M4 yesterday)

2 hours ago, seed said:

Some people might have the nerve to do the same map over and over again until they get the result they want, but I neither have the patience nor the time to do this, it doesn't work for me, so I'm trying to improve in other ways. I'm glad I came a long way since I came back to classic Doom around 2015 or so, but I'm not too sure how much room is left to improve my skills, and I know for a fact I'll never be a great player, after all I've played games for decades or years before and I remained at the same skill level I was after playing them for a few months. All my friends however managed to dramatically improve at the same games, and I would be a terrible liar if I said that doesn't leave me with a really sour taste in my mouth since they were worse players than myself once upon a time, but I could never reach their level once they surpassed mine.

 

It bothers me, but I'll get used to the fact I'm always going to be a decent player at best eventually.

I used to think it was ludicrous that people would want to be stuck playing the same map for weeks at a time, but lately my attempts to conquer Crash Bandicoot has been weirdly motivating. Ditto for Castlevania. Back then games were hard, really hard, and saving whenever was either a luxury or you had to earn a save, like actually earn it. Some cases there's no saving at all, so I get around that inconvenience in emulation by just saving at the beginning of the new level that I'm still stuck on. No different from leaving the console turned on.

I've also been heavy into Quake III and Quake Live lately. I've always liked arena FPS but I don't play them enough, so my actual skill has more or less remained the same for years, which is to say not great. But through rigorous playing against Hardcore bots, my aim, leading/tracking, movement, knowledge of weapons, item and player spawn locations, have skyrocketed in a short amount of time, because I just keep at it. How else do you think athletes stay fit? They're always working out. Keep your brain stimulated with a good video game, learn from mistakes instead of undoing them on the spot with a savegame, and continue to master every aspect of the mechanics until it's a second language to you. That's ultimately how you get good.

E: Also I'm not godlike all of a sudden either, but I can tell I've rapidly improved. Better now than I was before without a doubt. I can always get better too, if I just keep playing.

As a newcomer in playing wads by community I've decided to compile WADs by the next categories on doomwiki: Doom II WADs, Episode WADs and Cacoward winners. I avoided all ZDoom WADs because many of them are not enough vanilla. Why only episode WADs, not megawads? Because they're really long, I got bored in half of way (played Memento Mori I, II, but have never finished them). Episodes are perfect for me.

I got this result:

• Counterattack
• Crimson Canyon (current wad I play)
• Deus Vult II (completed but without pistol start. I'll play it once again later)
• Erkattäññe
• Legacy of Heroes
• Lunatic (too hard for me for now, will complete later)
• Maskim Xul
• Mayan Mishap
• Preacher (current wad I play along with Crimson Canyon)
• Scythe X (completed)
• Stardate 20X6
• Stardate 20X7
• Suspended in Dusk
• Swim With The Whales
• UAC Ultra (completed)
• Vae Victus 2
• Vanguard (too hard for me for now, will complete later)

1 hour ago, Lila Feuer said:

I used to think it was ludicrous that people would want to be stuck playing the same map for weeks at a time, but lately my attempts to conquer Crash Bandicoot has been weirdly motivating. Ditto for Castlevania. Back then games were hard, really hard, and saving whenever was either a luxury or you had to earn a save, like actually earn it. Some cases there's no saving at all, so I get around that inconvenience in emulation by just saving at the beginning of the new level that I'm still stuck on. No different from leaving the console turned on.

 

I've also been heavy into Quake III and Quake Live lately. I've always liked arena FPS but I don't play them enough, so my actual skill has more or less remained the same for years, which is to say not great. But through rigorous playing against Hardcore bots, my aim, leading/tracking, movement, knowledge of weapons, item and player spawn locations, have skyrocketed in a short amount of time, because I just keep at it. How else do you think athletes stay fit? They're always working out. Keep your brain stimulated with a good video game, learn from mistakes instead of undoing them on the spot with a savegame, and continue to master every aspect of the mechanics until it's a second language to you. That's ultimately how you get good.

 

E: Also I'm not godlike all of a sudden either, but I can tell I've rapidly improved. Better now than I was before without a doubt. I can always get better too, if I just keep playing.

 

I know, the more knowledge you get by studying the game and the harder you try, the better you get, but I feel you kinda missed my point too. What I was saying is that it just seems I can't get better sometimes, I mean, damn, like I previously said how else do you literally play something for nearly a decade... and you still suck, lol. It's ridiculous.

That's why I've drawn the conclusion that maybe I'm just not good at video games, or at the very least, not competitive ones, as I get brutally murdered far too often and learning from mistakes seems to get me absolutely nowhere. But that's not to say there has never been an improvement in any game for me. I can deal with slaughter nowadays, whereas if I played something in this style back in 2017 I would have probably been killed after the first encounter or two. I've beaten megawads like Ancient Aliens, Valiant, Sunder, Sunlust, the Stardates, Newgothic Doom, Alien Vendetta, Hell Revealed, Slaughterfest 2 and 3, the Combat Shocks, the Scythes, and the list goes on and on. I would have never expected to beat anything like this, but now I'm more than capable of doing so, even if I sometimes get my ass handed back to me in stupid ways.

But I also have a strange way of looking at my skills. Even if all looks fine to me I'd rather have someone who is much better than myself tell me what they think, so that I don't believe the illusion when in reality, I'm trash.

As about saving, that depends on how you're using them. I'm using them primarily as checkpoints, so that when a fight commences but ends with me turned into gibs I can just do it again from scratch, that's good enough for me as I still learn the mechanics of the fight while not wasting time redoing the whole map yet again. I don't have that kind of patience for long or complex maps. Fun fact, I'm sometimes making things more difficult for myself by saving at the worst possible moment, like I did today in BTSX. I finished a map with 13hp as I screwed up at the very end, and subsequently died like 4 or 5 times on the next map at the beginning because low on health and hitscanners happened. It was so much better after I pistol started the said map, but I refused to do so in the beginning, even though I barely had any ammo left rofl.

Improving, but it fucking SUCKS when you die when it's easy. My death on MAP02 of Plutonia back when it was chosen for the Ironman really PISSED ME OFF. In a way, I took it as a HUGE slap over the face. You learn nothing when after all that time, you still die LIKE A MORON. I should have been able to reach the end of the IWAD after all I've been through AND having previous knowledge of the levels, dying on the Soul Bridge was like the roof collapsed on my head. I was like "SERIOUSLY??? AFTER EVERYTHING I'VE PLAYED UP TO THIS POINT I STILL DIE HERE??!!!!" I've been angry and disappointed by myself for the rest of that day, you can check that topic if you want to have a good laugh, I've made plenty of frustrated comments :v.

1 hour ago, seed said:

What I was saying is that it just seems I can't get better sometimes, I mean, damn, like I previously said how else do you literally play something for nearly a decade... and you still suck, lol. It's ridiculous.

Not everyone is gonna be the top player at their favorite game, everyone has varying degree of skill, if your resume of completion includes the PWADs you listed, which are some of the most challenging made, that's enough to be proud of right there. To be yet conquered by a tough PWAD is to be a great player. If you're thinking league level, then yeah not everyone can be a no damage / no deaths / insert gimmicky play style here / high(est) difficulty player. I'd be very flattered if I can hope to conquer something with no deaths. No damage is something else entirely, my reaction time and reflexes would have to be off the charts. At the very least I'm just happy if I can get through something on hard(est) difficulty without giving up and lowering the difficulty or just quitting altogether (or cheating, which may as well be the same as giving up). I'm also no speedrunner and have no interest in speedrunning anything, that's not how I enjoy games.
 

Though, in regards to lowering difficulty, if something is really fucking brutal, it might not be a bad idea to take it down a notch, so as to not just stand a chance to begin with, but to study what you're up against.

6 minutes ago, Lila Feuer said:

Not everyone is gonna be the top player at their favorite game, everyone has varying degree of skill, if your resume of completion includes the PWADs you listed, which are some of the most challenging made, that's enough to be proud of right there. To be yet conquered by a tough PWAD is to be a great player. If you're thinking league level, then yeah not everyone can be a no damage / no deaths / insert gimmicky play style here / high(est) difficulty player. I'd be very flattered if I can hope to conquer something with no deaths. No damage is something else entirely, my reaction time and reflexes would have to be off the charts. At the very least I'm just happy if I can get through something on hard(est) difficulty without giving up and lowering the difficulty or just quitting altogether (or cheating, which may as well be the same as giving up). I'm also no speedrunner and have no interest in speedrunning anything, that's not how I enjoy games.
 

Though, in regards to lowering difficulty, if something is really fucking brutal, it might not be a bad idea to take it down a notch, so as to not just stand a chance to begin with, but to study what you're up against.

Yeah, that's also not my goal anyway, Doom god level is beyond unrealistic. I just want to be decent at least and not keep on dying when I really shouldn't, if I can do that it's good enough for me.

They are, and there's much more than those, just that I didn't remember all from the top off my head and they're among the most difficult I've finished. There's also the Deus Vult duology, liked the first, and absolutely loved the sequel.

1 hour ago, dmslr said:

 

• Vanguard (too hard for me for now, will complete later)

Now this part doesn't make much sense to me. Vanguard too difficult? But you have beaten considerably more difficult wads, such as the Stardates and especially Deus Vult 2.

37 minutes ago, seed said:

Stardates

They are just in my wish list, I've not even started many of them. And I forgot to tell I used to save scum when played DV2

one thing to add to that great wall of useful text from rdwpa is

use the walk key

i dont mean just play stroller and die a lot but i see a lot of players ( and myself included! ) sprinting about the place at the speed of sound, spamming rockets and then dying and saying 'shitty map cheating archviles bullshit!' but if theyd just slowed the pace slightly, appraised the situation before diving in they might have spotted an ambush or a strategy to a particular encounter :)

my play definitely improved overall and i still play better if im in that 'walk-first' mindset.

I'm in camp "route first", and the walk key is nearly a foreign concept to me, because I can tap if needs be.

@rdwpa Now that's a good post 👌.

And you're right about knowing what to prioritize, that changes the outcome of a fight dramatically. You might think something is difficult but in reality, if you simply knew how to handle it, it would have been almost trivial. Coming up with a good strategy is sometimes much more useful than running around at 200mph shooting everywhere.

12 hours ago, dmslr said:

As a newcomer in playing wads by community I've decided to compile WADs by the next categories on doomwiki: Doom II WADs, Episode WADs and Cacoward winners. I avoided all ZDoom WADs because many of them are not enough vanilla. Why only episode WADs, not megawads? Because they're really long, I got bored in half of way (played Memento Mori I, II, but have never finished them). Episodes are perfect for me.

I got this result:

• Counterattack
• Crimson Canyon (current wad I play)
• Deus Vult II (completed but without pistol start. I'll play it once again later)
• Erkattäññe
• Legacy of Heroes
• Lunatic (too hard for me for now, will complete later)
• Maskim Xul
• Mayan Mishap
• Preacher (current wad I play along with Crimson Canyon)
• Scythe X (completed)
• Stardate 20X6
• Stardate 20X7
• Suspended in Dusk
• Swim With The Whales
• UAC Ultra (completed)
• Vae Victus 2
• Vanguard (too hard for me for now, will complete later)

If your having difficulty playing something you could just lower the difficulty. That is why people implement them in their maps. I used to think that i had to just beat everything on UV. I haven't even played half of the so called classics "legitimately" so to speak, as i just save scummed through a lot of 'em so i'm going back and replaying them on difficulties that i can handle. In the end it's all about having fun right? 

Also, there are some great Doom 1 WAD's (single level WAD's too) so i would recommend checking out a few WAD's from every year, not just Doom II ones or newer ones. BTW i have found that a lot of newer WAD's tend to put up a far greater challenge then some of the older ones do, although that's not always true. Just a few thoughts ;)

7 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I'm in camp "route first", and the walk key is nearly a foreign concept to me, because I can tap if needs be.

thats fine im talking about just blind-playing a map for the first time, especially if i havent played a map from the mapper before.