RAY MOHAWK 2 - Development Thread

Awesome, looks amazing Scypek, thanks!

@Azure_Horror thanks for the kind remarks! I’ll be sure to up the ante just a bit for the HMP version, I’ll definitely be incorporating some of your suggestions.

@Peccatum Mihzamiz I'm really glad there was a smaller variant of that texture - a few select textures had to be extended to be 128 pixels tall because vanilla Doom goes haywire with tutti-frutti otherwise. I'm sorry, I didn't even forsee the possibility that this would cause these kinds of conflicts! I really hope it isn't present elsewhere, but I haven't noticed it yet.

On 8/7/2021 at 9:44 AM, rd. said:

Went ahead and handled our map with Aurelius first.

rd, could you please do me a solid and give me a new version of this map, that only swaps the plasma and RL spawn points (since slot 5 and 6 were switched to avoid auto-switching to the deadly cell cannon). Whenever I touch a map made by Aurelius in GZDB it totally falls apart - the same damn thing happened during the development of Rudy 2 (ugh!)

I mean, things' map numbers are one of the things editable with dehacked, so it should be possible to swap all weapons across all maps this way with no issues, as far as I know... though maybe it's too late for that now.

10 hours ago, Scypek2 said:

I mean, things' map numbers are one of the things editable with dehacked, so it should be possible to swap all weapons across all maps this way with no issues, as far as I know... though maybe it's too late for that now.

The reason I didn’t do it this way is because ZDaemon doesn’t use the sprite, but the thing ID to decide what is what (unlike vanilla Doom and most ports). I’m catering to this funky limitation for ZD compat, just because it’s one of my main ports.

edit: oh wait, thing ID can be changed in dehacked.. I haven’t tested how well changing that works in ZD, but.. Ah well, it’s “too late” now, I already went through and swapped them all manually.. I’ll make sure everything is where it belongs for your map though!

On 9/25/2021 at 9:26 PM, Doomkid said:

The reason I didn’t do it this way is because ZDaemon doesn’t use the sprite, but the thing ID to decide what is what (unlike vanilla Doom and most ports). I’m catering to this funky limitation for ZD compat, just because it’s one of my main ports.

 

It isn't just that, switching the ammo would be an issue because you could have a set of rockets right next to a bfg and not be able to use it because it uses cells but now has a rocket next to it.

Nevermind I tested the latest version and I don't know how it was done but slot 6 still uses type 3 ammo.  I'd love to know how it is done though because I didn't know if that was possible 

On 9/28/2021 at 1:33 AM, Plank_Guy_89 said:

Nevermind I tested the latest version and I don't know how it was done but slot 6 still uses type 3 ammo.  I'd love to know how it is done though because I didn't know if that was possible 

In WhackEd4, under "Weapons", just change the RL to use cells and vice/versa. Swapping ammo has caused glitches on me before - but for whatever reason, rocket and cell based weapons don't seem to mind swapping.

9 hours ago, Doomkid said:

In WhackEd4, under "Weapons", just change the RL to use cells and vice/versa. Swapping ammo has caused glitches on me before - but for whatever reason, rocket and cell based weapons don't seem to mind swapping.

That's really weird, I know that the game glitches when setting the plasma attack to the pistol but not the rocket.  But swaping the weapon states allows for the pistol slot to have it, the fire pistol state just glitches when set to fire plasma.  

Map19 (soon to be Map17) - "Poster Boy of Mayhem" by Aurelius & rd

Corners are mean. Like really, really mean. They catch explosive plasma projectiles like there is no tomorrow... This applies both to the final fight with all the cybers and preceding encounters relying on heavy cell cannon usage.

Also, I failed to reach the radsuit. Good thing that it is not a secret!

Overall impression - masterfully crafted map, full of cool combat puzzles. It is evil, but pretty fair. The lats fight in the 6 column room is my favourite part. Highlights of the map:

- The only berserk-heavy map of the WAD (secretly).

- The map demonstrates the TRUE power of fiery destruction.

- The combination of heavy cell cannon usage and limited cell ammo is unique.

- All fights are very well choreographed.

Potential unintentionally frustrating parts:

UV-difficulty commentary:

- The spot between SG and blaster at the very start begs for a green armor, especcially with the map being intended for slot 17.

HMP-difficulty commentary:

- Megasphere at the start helps a lot, but I feel like it may prove insufficient. The problem is chain-zaps, which can easily deal 200-300 damage. For an UV player avoiding chain zaps is expected. But some of the more casual players can really get stuck on the first archvile fight, given the risk of chain-zaps and the traits of this fight, discussed at the spoiler above.

- The archvile corridor inside the secret can be problematic for non-UV difficulty. Berserking the viles can feel rather un-intuitive, unless the player is used to the idea of fighting archviles with berserker fist. Also, there is no ammo problem on non-UV difficulties, so the player may find themselves very confused about the intended solution to this encounter.

- The cyber battle. On HMP I somehow managed to exhaust all fuel ammo. I won, but had no fuel left. This was due to non-effective ammo usage, so this was my fault. But I still shot mostly on target. So I theorize that there is some risk of running out of ammo in this fight. Pretty fair for UV, but is this ok for HMP?

Alrighty, here's map 10: Kalua Atoll
Midi: Gannons Lair (Link: The Faces of Evil MIDI by vitawrap)

Note: on choc doom, the long sight lines may cause some screen distortion, and the MIDI I think is too complex for choc doom as it won't play.
May need a replacement for lower source ports, and i can modify the map if the screen tears are unacceptable

I hopefully fulfilled the requirement of a flamethrower introduction map, a lot of the combat here is split between managing hordes and dealing with high health enemies in some slightly restricted spaces (thankfully the damage of the flamethrower shreds these guys). I also tried doing the map with the machinegun and the difference in kill time is very noticeable, and the map is much harder trying to use that over the flamethrower, so hopefully thats a good sign that this shows the strengths of the flamer.

Please playtest and let me know how it runs, as i'd really like to get a good difficulty down.

A very cool map overall DFF!

My initial impression is that it's a bit too much of a ball-buster, even on UV. Using a source port (GZDoom, which is of course a lot easier than vanilla) I did manage to beat it, but a player would have to be damn good to beat this on vanilla since it makes the game a fair bit harder.

I have some ideas about making the map a touch easier that you'll hopefully be willing to incorporate:

• The initial wave is actually the hardest part of the map, for me. It's that god damn demon spawn point right by the cave entrance - They're just close enough to where blasting them always results in a suicide (for me, anyway). I basically just waited til I got down to like 10% health then did a mad scramble to collect the health lying around, and got lucky.

At my skill, it pretty much depends if I get blessed by RNGsus as to whether or not I survive. Maybe that spawn point could be moved quite a bit farther (200+ units) from the cave entrance to give a little breathing space when lobbing "cell rockets" at them as they spawn? (This type of pressure isn't seen until around map14-15ish, to give some context). I also think the first wave should be shaved down just a bit - maybe 90% of what it currently throws at you.

• The Cyberdemon battle gives too little space. It's already a bit tough to tell where the "walkable area" ends even with the red light markers, but with strict Doom physics the player gets snagged badly on the invisible lines. Since I also feel like the flamethrower should be an easy gimmie in this map, a good solution would be to lower the little island with the flamethrower so it can be instantly stepped on/attained. Here's a pic of about the space I'd like to see for the Cyber fight:

(The waterfall secret is cool, instead of teleporting the player since it would then be pointless, maybe a berzerk or even a soulsphere could just be hiding behind the fall instead? Up to you ultimately, just an idea for what to replace it with.)

• Half of the cacodemons in this map should be selected - basically at random - and set to "multiplayer only". Even with the powerful-ass flamethrower, those meatballs are excessive and take up an annoying amount of room, doubly so with infinite monster height switched on. To compensate for such a drastic reduction, maybe 3 or 4 medkits should be switched to stimpacks (for UV anyway).

• The 3 Viles w/ little cover (that are exposed once you grab the megasphere) seems a bit too tough at only Map10. Maybe just reduce it down to one Vile? Selecting two of them and ticking "MP only" would ensure this map stays thrilling if there's 2 or more players.

---

There's also some adjustments I'd make, more for technical reasons than difficulty reasons:

• In vanilla, if the player shoots the eye before collecting the cell cannon, it's teleported to the top of the crate and can't be attained. This could be fixed by making the crate just a few pixels wider.

• Another vanilla issue, the game will switch to the cell cannon when the player is totally out of ammo, but only if you have fuel. This is because the vanilla EXE (stupidly) checks to see if the player has any "rockets" (aka fuel) rather than checking cells, even though the weapon has been changed to use cells. Due to this lame-ass bug, I think it'd be a good idea to make it so the player starts picking up fuel after they already attained the flamethrower. There's a metric ton of fuel on this map, so getting rid of some of them and moving the rest of it to be after that point should hopefully be pretty straightforward.

• The HOMs (aka screen tearing) are only bad at the starting area. A good way to reduce this is to reduce the number of linedefs - the little decorative outcrops with trees on them could have half the number of vertexes/linedefs without any noticeable reduction in detail. Since the thing limit is also surpassed in vanilla, about half of the "big trees" (not the palms) could be selected basically at random and deleted with not much perceptible loss at all.

(Oh, and you're right about the MIDI - I tried simplifying it, but it's just got too many control changes for vanilla to handle..)

---

Feels like I just made a big wall of complaints, but really this is a badass map that only needs what amounts to small tweaks when all's said and done. I'm really pleased with this submission, I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do with this feedback. I think it makes a great flamethrower introduction!

I greatly appreciate the feedback. I can make a majority of those changes, all welcome. The cyberdemon showdown I was the most iffy on. I didn't have a lot to work with space wise there, but I liked showing the player that the flamethrower is even quite effective against the beefiest enemy. I made a cyberdemon appear on easy instead of the bikes in the third area, figuring infighting and open space would be an easy fight.

@Doomkid also after reading your comments, I hate to say it but I think you changed the flamethrower and the cell cannon around, but this map was designed before that change... Whoops.

Since the player gets the flamethrower from the start and the cell cannon should be on the secret island... You might have a much better experience with the correct weaponry lol. I designed the map so that the flamethrower should be mostly the only weapon available. Not the cell cannon.

My bad if I was supposed to do the swap, guess I was using an older beta without it.

I do agree I could tone down the crack swarm a bit, and all the vanilla and bug issues mentioned I think I can fix. I'll get to it sometime in the next 24 hours hopefully. And I'll make sure to download the most recent compilation and replace all the weapons and ammo.

Updated map 10, same link will still work. I implemented majority of the structural changes suggested and some balance tweaks, mostly lowering the monster count in the tougher sections. The cyber fight has a lot more room and the island is no longer a secret, with the secret teleporter taking the player elsewhere. I also swapped the flamethrower and Cell cannon to their new correct thing IDs as per the latest compilation.

This should be a easier and more correct experience. I also reduced the initial are things and linedefs, and tried my best to minimize the tearing by reducing item and linedef count. couldn't remove it entirely without removing major components of the map and its details.

Thanks DFF, I’ll try this latest version once at my PC. (So the flame thrower is meant to be right at the start.. that makes perfect sense! I didn’t even consider the swap, now that you’ve pointed it out, I’m facepalming - I should have realised..)

So DFF, I played the map (with the weapons in the right place!) and everything clicked, lol. Great map, really happy with it now!

What MIDI do you want to use? Since the one you selected messed with vanilla/choco it needs to be changed, but something just a tad more "light hearted" would be awesome. Otherwise, this is great.

18 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

So DFF, I played the map (with the weapons in the right place!) and everything clicked, lol. Great map, really happy with it now!

 

What MIDI do you want to use? Since the one you selected messed with vanilla/choco it needs to be changed, but something just a tad more "light hearted" would be awesome. Otherwise, this is great.

I will investigate to find another, i think i had one in mind but i'll find one.

18 hours ago, DFF said:

Updated map 10, same link will still work. I implemented majority of the structural changes suggested and some balance tweaks, mostly lowering the monster count in the tougher sections. The cyber fight has a lot more room and the island is no longer a secret, with the secret teleporter taking the player elsewhere. I also swapped the flamethrower and Cell cannon to their new correct thing IDs as per the latest compilation.

This should be a easier and more correct experience. I also reduced the initial are things and linedefs, and tried my best to minimize the tearing by reducing item and linedef count. couldn't remove it entirely without removing major components of the map and its details.

Tested on HMP and UV.

The map feels pretty much perfect now!

Three random small thoughts:

But those suggestions are very minor. The current version of the map is already feels complete, and fits perfectly for its slot in the WAD.

BTW, playing this map on UV-conitinuous without flamethrower is hard. It requires both backpack and precise Cell Cannon usage. Without backpack the player will exhaust their non-flame ammo somewhere around the cacoswarm. Is the plan to remove backpacks on maps 4-9 still considered?

https://doomshack.org/uploads/mohawk2o.zip

Hey DFF, I hope you don't mind, I had a go at making some small revisions to your map after doing a few playthroughs. I found I always had way more than a full compliment of fuel at the end of the map so I did just a little ammo rearranging. There's enough fuel to kill almost every enemy with it, but I feel like reducing the abundance just a tad adds some pressure/excitement.

I also removed a couple more mostly-superfluous linedefs/vertexes and now there's pretty much no HOMs or anything even in DOSbox, and yet the map still looks great. If you don't want to use this version (or want to use it as a base for more of your own edits), either way is totally fine, just thought I'd put it out there. I think it feels pretty much perfect. (I did these changes yesterday before Azure Horror left feedback, but coincidentally I also thought to add an AV at the very end just as a fun "gimmie" final kill!)

Azure_Horror, regarding the removal of backpacks, I did swap them out of map04 and map05 (way too early for backpacks, after all) but some other maps before 10 probably do have them. I feel at that point, it's late enough for them to be hanging around. Try this version and see how you go, I think it's a blast (although it still has the Slyors for the first wave, keep in mind)

6 hours ago, Doomkid said:

https://doomshack.org/uploads/mohawk2o.zip

 

Hey DFF, I hope you don't mind, I had a go at making some small revisions to your map after doing a few playthroughs. I found I always had way more than a full compliment of fuel at the end of the map so I did just a little ammo rearranging. There's enough fuel to kill almost every enemy with it, but I feel like reducing the abundance just a tad adds some pressure/excitement.

 

I also removed a couple more mostly-superfluous linedefs/vertexes and now there's pretty much no HOMs or anything even in DOSbox, and yet the map still looks great. If you don't want to use this version (or want to use it as a base for more of your own edits), either way is totally fine, just thought I'd put it out there. I think it feels pretty much perfect. (I did these changes yesterday before Azure Horror left feedback, but coincidentally I also thought to add an AV at the very end just as a fun "gimmie" final kill!)

 

Azure_Horror, regarding the removal of backpacks, I did swap them out of map04 and map05 (way too early for backpacks, after all) but some other maps before 10 probably do have them. I feel at that point, it's late enough for them to be hanging around. Try this version and see how you go, I think it's a blast (although it still has the Slyors for the first wave, keep in mind)

 

 

I tested out the changes you map. I appreciate the work and I do like the visual changes, they still look nice, however I'm gonna push back on the ammo reduction a little bit. Making the backpack secret only is fine, however i ran out of ammo before everything was dead in the beginning on both attempts, the second with me being very cautious about ammo usage. I also ran completely out by the cacoswarm and the final arena. I can make the ammo counts a bit more conservative, and ill try a third run to see if i can make it work pistol start on UV, but my intention with the map was more to make sure the player never had to switch to another weapon, and that it could be completed flamethrower only. The pistol being an absolute last resort. I agree that forcing the player to move around in order to maintain the ammo they need is a good way to add to the action, but i'd argue in this case, for this kind of map as a demo to the flamethrower, its better to give the player a bit more liberty with the ammo than to restrict it too much.

Also I think i'd prefer going with the Sonic Adventure 2 Track I found, while mostly a nice track, the KernKraft 400 track (or sports theme track) is just a little too goofy, not quite the tone i wanted (also doesn't help that my local sports teams love the track lol).

I did try a third time, and if you tap-fire and are very precise with your ammo, you can save anywhere from 20-100 units up until the cacoswarm, in which i ran out again. Also the final arena feels very tough when you have to monitor your fuel levels aswell. I will go back and make some edits and present another version. 

Alright, here's V1.2 of Map10

I added just a bit more flame ammo, but rearange a lot of it so the player will have to move around the whole player space to get it, this stops the player from being front loaded and able to just backup for most of the fighting. 

I changed the green armor on the cyber island to a berserk. This may help in pinches of low ammo, and the green/blue armor was redundant when the next area gave a megasphere

added a lone archvile near the entrance of the facility, serves as another known monster DPS report and as something the player needs to worry about should they push past the mancubi to get a better spot + supplies from the caco swarm.

also added 600 flame units to multiplayer only as there is a decently larger monster supply on multiplayer.

7 hours ago, Doomkid said:

https://doomshack.org/uploads/mohawk2o.zip

 

Hey DFF, I hope you don't mind, I had a go at making some small revisions to your map after doing a few playthroughs. I found I always had way more than a full compliment of fuel at the end of the map so I did just a little ammo rearranging. There's enough fuel to kill almost every enemy with it, but I feel like reducing the abundance just a tad adds some pressure/excitement.

 

I also removed a couple more mostly-superfluous linedefs/vertexes and now there's pretty much no HOMs or anything even in DOSbox, and yet the map still looks great. If you don't want to use this version (or want to use it as a base for more of your own edits), either way is totally fine, just thought I'd put it out there. I think it feels pretty much perfect. (I did these changes yesterday before Azure Horror left feedback, but coincidentally I also thought to add an AV at the very end just as a fun "gimmie" final kill!)

 

I agree with DFF here, the ammo is too low. You have to keep in mind that the flamethrower can feel extremely clunky to use, unless you learn the deatails of the weapon. And learning its details is hard. Its range is unclear. It hides enemy projectiles. Its time to kill is unknown. Hell, its projectiles even obscure the dying animation of enemies! And this map is made to teach the player that flamethrower is fun and reliable! Limiting ammo will teach the opposite: the flamethrower is a bad gimmicky blaster replacement, that was made by the WAD authors to torture players.

The lack of fuel is espessially bad for continuous. It will discourage flamethrower use for any critical fights. Thus it will be relegated it to a clean up weapon.

So the abundant ammo count is good, maybe even neccessary. And fuel ammo is the least broken ammo type on continuous, IMHO. I am also not so sure about moving backpack to a secret area. That change greatly increases the chances of wasting large fuel cans.

24 minutes ago, DFF said:

Alright, here's V1.2 of Map10

I added just a bit more flame ammo, but rearange a lot of it so the player will have to move around the whole player space to get it, this stops the player from being front loaded and able to just backup for most of the fighting. 

I changed the green armor on the cyber island to a berserk. This may help in pinches of low ammo, and the green/blue armor was redundant when the next area gave a megasphere

 

added a lone archvile near the entrance of the facility, serves as another known monster DPS report and as something the player needs to worry about should they push past the mancubi to get a better spot + supplies from the caco swarm.

also added 600 flame units to multiplayer only as there is a decently larger monster supply on multiplayer.

1) First things first: Hell knights are fit right in! But i noticed something: the second wave, (the one with mancubi), feels better with slyors. They offer a lot opportunities for infighting the barons and mancubi, and introduce a bit of chaos. With first wave knights, second wave slyors the fight would have a wonderful two-punch structure:

wave 1) Unleash the power of the flames!

wave 2) Now do the same, but with projectile hell involved.

2) The fuel count is still too low. I came to the cyber with 30 fuel! This is bad for a learning map.

3) IMHO, the blue armor at the start was fitting. It encourages aggression. And aggression is what we want from the player. The player would feel oppressed in the later fights anyway.

4) The cyber. IMHO, here you need not a berserk, but a whole supercharge. Remember that this is the first relatively claustrophobic cyber in the WAD. And you are meant to fight it with a new, unfamiliar weapon. And that new weapon obscures cyber's projectiles. And cybers in Ray 2 have new firing pattern. So, IMHO, it is fitting to give the player an additional helpful bonus.

5) About backpacks and berserks. Berserk would fit right into either of the two secrets (maybe even both). Backpack, IMHO, should not be a secret on this map. It should either appear somewhere before the cacoswarm, or be completely absent.

6) About the cacoswarm. This fight strongly depends on an amount of HP saved after two archviles. Maybe the imps should be realeased by pressing a switch, so the player would have a choice of saving the mega for later?

7) About AVs. AVs at the end and near the entrance to the facility feel right at home! I also noticed that the revenant ledge after the cyber is a perfect spot for an archvile sniper. Another potentially interseting place for a lone archvile - empty cacoswarm arena (before the imp army gets revealed).

7 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Azure_Horror, regarding the removal of backpacks, I did swap them out of map04 and map05 (way too early for backpacks, after all) but some other maps before 10 probably do have them. I feel at that point, it's late enough for them to be hanging around.

Well, the backpacks are not really needed at maps 06, 07, 08 and 09. The monster count is not high enough yet, and with the powerful arsenal you have a lot of opportunities to to save ammo for later maps. Having the first backpack at map 10 or 11 will be a little nudge about things becoming more difficult soon!

@Azure_Horror Love your in depth feedback, very helpful. If you have any comments for Chocolate island, let me know.

I’m glad you didn’t mind me taking a crack at your map, DFF. Latest version is great! And don’t pay any mind to that MIDI, I just slapped it in so I wouldn’t hear silence while testing.

I do agree with Azure Horror about keeping Slyors, (just not for the first wave), and even probably about reinstating the Blue Armor at the start (maybe I was just in a stingy mood the other day when tinkering with it, lol).

Either way this is small beans and I appreciate you taking the feedback on board. It really is a blast of an arena, especially coming off the back of the adventure that is map09.

Quick question before i do more edits, as Azure mentioned and my original design, am i allowed to introduce the backpack or do you want it a secret? I can comply with that but i would prefer a backpack by at least the caco fight.

Either way is totally fine by me

Another map update with a bit more balance tweaking. mainly swapping the megasphere before the imp fight to a backpack, and making the megasphere optional to grab by the waterfall. Ammo should be plentiful when needed, but should leave the player mostly dry at the end of the map.

14 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

@Azure_Horror Love your in depth feedback, very helpful. If you have any comments for Chocolate island, let me know.

Chocolate island, played on UV

Overall impression:

Very good map. Introduces truly vicious archvile use and claustrophobic fights, while also employing some nasty tricks from maps 01-07.

I especially liked the cyber section and the non-linearity of the map.

I found two minor issues.

1) Slyors have insane melee DPS. As a result, insta-pop slyor ambush at the cell cannon niche (point (3) at the spoilered image below) deletes player instantly on a blind playthrough. I think that ambush should have other monsters. Like, two revenants and a pinkie, or a hell knight and two specters.

2) Killing the Vile ambush with Auto-SG rewards the player with empty shell coffers. Feels super lame! I think that moving one shell box from (1) to (2) will fix this problem. If the player would go to (1), they would still have 60 shells from boxes at both (1) and (2). And if the player defeats the vile ambush using Auto-SG from (4), they will be able to use that Auto-SG against some other enemies.

Automap screencap, with points of interest marked

After some thinking, I see an alternative, potentially more fun way to address 2):

Issues 1) and 2) aside, Chocolate island is an awesome map. It employs cool blending of classical and modern mapping styles, incorporating both choreographed setpices and overall simple-but-fun free-roaming structure. The difficulty and mapsize feel perfect for slot 08.

5 hours ago, DFF said:

Another map update with a bit more balance tweaking. mainly swapping the megasphere before the imp fight to a backpack, and making the megasphere optional to grab by the waterfall. Ammo should be plentiful when needed, but should leave the player mostly dry at the end of the map.

The map is getting there! BTW, I managed to end the map with 330 fuel, while minimizing infights, berserk and cell usage. I think, balancing for both plentiful fuel ammo and mostly dry coffers at the map's end is impossible. Flamethrower is not a cell cannon, it is very hard to predict the ammount of fuel spent, especially on a blind playthrough of the WAD.

Right now, the ammo balance feels right. But it feels right for me, who is an experienced flamethrower user! I think that true first time players would appreciate additional fuel at the starting beach. Basically, I think that the pick-ups (fuel and blue armor) at the starting beach should be reverted to the original amount. Reasons:

- It is hard to see small fuel cans due to corpses.

- It is hard to manage ammo with unfamiliar weapon.

- It is hard to maneuver with monsters appearing all around the place and the flames obstructing the view.

Some thoughts about the start of the Cacoswarm area :

1) Maybe it would be good to add one revenant or hell knight to the imp cave (point (1) on the image inside spoiler below). Imps in the cave feel too insignificant on their own.

2) The blue armor should return to the waterfall area, and keep the mega outside of the concrete wall. The player can arrive to this fight with about 100 health and no armor after the cyber encounter. In that state, engaging two Viles with little cover may prove very difficult. I think that the island with the small fuel can would be a perfect spot for a megasphere. The potential spot for mega is marked (2) on the image below.

3) To compensate for a free mega, I suggest adding one free roaming archvile to the area (for example, to point (3)). Yes, the area has no cover, but it would have an obvious free megasphere. Basically, this would be another vile to gauge the power of flamethrower. It also would serve as a soft forewarning about imp-archvile fight.

Automap screencap, with points of interest marked

Small idea about the exit room:

I think Pinkie-Vile pair would be better than Vile-Rev combo. The pinkie goes to a waterfall niche, and vile gets to exit teleporter itself.

Minor tweaks made according to @Azure_Horror's suggestions (thanks a ton).

-switched blaster and auto shotty

-minor adjustments to ammo placement

-replaced blue key Slyors with Revenants

chocolate island.zip

Some thoughts/observations about melee weapons:

- Ray's knife: this thing is essentially a variation of Vanilla berserked fist. It deals less damage per hit, but attacks much faster, and has some other benefits. First of all, due to doom RNG magic the knife one-hits imps more often than OG berserk. Second, it is pretty good at triggering pain chance. And last, but not least, it feels much more responsive than berserked fist. BTW, when Ray decides to stab an archvile, the archvile only has time for one zap!

- Berserked knife: Yo, we heard you like going berserk, so we applied berserk to your berserk...

If normal knife works like berserk, than berserked knife is a berserk squared. This is a melee power weapon. It one-stabs revenants, destroys archviles, and with invulnerability power up it even grinds Cyberdemons to dust! It is a bit sad that there is no berserk-focused map in the WAD...

- The gauntlets: I feel like the gauntlets still need some strong buff. Compared to the chainsaw from Bourgeois Megawad, the gauntlets feel much more clunky. The Bourgeois chainsaw is better at latching onto enemies and has better painchance. This translates to the following result: with Bourgeois chainsaw you can reliably defeat hell knights, and may even fight an archvile in a pinch. You cannot do the same with the gauntlets. Add to that the power of Ray's knife and pistol, and the gauntlets become the most situational weapon ever.

22 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

Minor tweaks made according to @Azure_Horror's suggestions (thanks a ton).

 

-switched blaster and auto shotty

-minor adjustments to ammo placement

-replaced blue key Slyors with Revenants

 

chocolate island.zip

 

Playtested the new version. Wow! The blaster switch feels extremely fitting. Now the gameplay feels super smooth!

Updated version of our map with Aurelius. This is an updated version of 2n's because 2o's is actually an accidental reversion (hopefully no one has played that).

mohawk_aurd_map.zip