What are you playing now?

Wow I finished Eternal Doom properly finally after my last playthrough 12 years ago. I'm left with such a conflicting feeling, you work so hard to get three out of six keys and they just hand you the last three over and before you know it you're fighting the most anti climatic Icon fight ever and it ends. I'm not sure how I feel about this megawad or if I ever want to play it again.

I'm doing Whispers of Satan next, since I got 15ish maps in and never finished it, also 12 years ago.

1 hour ago, Lila Feuer said:

Holy shit where the fuck did I go wrong? This isn't open like it is in the video. I'm blown away. Am I gonna have to noclip to finish this monstrocity?

E: You have to walk into a web and use it. Wow, disgusting.

The web conceals a switch, it's definitely easy to miss.

Tried Whispers of Satan, the symmetry and copy paste design drove me insane. This took more than three years to make?! Gave up halfway through and moved on to Number One Kill: The Next Generation, which I haven't seen in a very long time. One man megawad with 22 maps that was undoubtedly bested by Requiem, Hell Revealed, STRAIN and Eternal Doom III. Damn, 1997 was a great year for megawads! It's honestly like a better Master Levels, they're all pretty hard with big fights, MAP06 was a fucking drag however. Currently on MAP10.

So far, I'am playing need for speed pro street

Toilet of the Gods Map01-03 UV. Having a lot of "fun" with "those" platforms in map01 :(

Just finished Augur;Zenith and loved it. Every map was a wonder to behold. Now I'm working through DBP36, and I love the underwater theme. It's very different!

EDIT: Finished DBP36. It was good, if short.

Sunlust

Sunder

Deus Vult 1

Sunder

Flotsam 

Stardate 20x7

Dimensions

On 10/16/2021 at 6:54 AM, Lila Feuer said:

Tried Whispers of Satan, the symmetry and copy paste design drove me insane. This took more than three years to make?! Gave up halfway through and moved on to Number One Kill: The Next Generation, which I haven't seen in a very long time. One man megawad with 22 maps that was undoubtedly bested by Requiem, Hell Revealed, STRAIN and Eternal Doom III. Damn, 1997 was a great year for megawads! It's honestly like a better Master Levels, they're all pretty hard with big fights, MAP06 was a fucking drag however. Currently on MAP10.

WoS is not worth the time imho. Playing through Scythe right now, map 24 so far, having a blast.

I’m playing many wads for the first time; Going Down (on Map32 now), Eviternity (Map05), Valiant (Map07), Fractured Worlds (Map03)…

And Scythe. Had to switch to HMP on MAP28, I can’t fathom how that can be completed on UV, even on HMP I could only bare beat it so that MAP29 started with 0% health (glad I’m playing pistol starts :P). Switched back to UV and then hit MAP30. Oh man… Back to lower difficulties, I guess.

Right now, after an interruption of several weeks, I've resumed CPD (which I am finding to be a uniformly amazing project), DTWID (which does indeed capture some of the intangible essence of the originals) and I'm continuing to to chip away at Eviternity (way late to the party on that one). A buddy has suggested I try Sunlust next. 

Dieing to Malcolm Sailor's GOAWAY09   I was doing really well until that stupid rev on the way to the Yellow Key; after that I just couldn't redo my previous success on the map.   Really nice map so far, a few tight spaced fights; but personally I think it's something that can benefit the player in most situations.   So far I like it.

I am playing all sorts of things, i almost beat Dunn & Dunn's First Blood until iy got slaughtermappy, the last (i think?) level was a pain.

i was also playing 32 piece Cliptucky Fried Chicken Special. by Clippy.

I'm on MAP18 of Doom 2 Reloaded, last played in 2009 on Skulltag with that port's monsters, weapons and items added in via randomization. Jeez I feel old saying that. It's pretty decent but I can't help but feel it's a little sterile and lacking in personality like the original Doom II.

Been working through Tarnsman's Projectile Hell. It's very competently made and it has good balance, but it's not gripping me like Augur;Zenith did.

Finally got around to starting Valiant. Unfortunately, I think I ruined the wad for myself. I had watched both Decino's playthrough and Dean of Doom's review of it beforehand, and now I'm getting a weird sense of "I've already done this" with all of the levels, making them feel less interesting. Now I'm losing motivation to even finish it.

On a brighter note, I've also started Perpetual Powers recently, and so far I've been having a lot of fun with it.

I haven't been playing much Doom recently (busy with other games) but started Syringe on Switch. Map 1 is pleasantly difficult and gave me a run for my money - especially when that Archvile showed up towards the end. I wasn't expecting that.

Also wasn't expecting how much Doom I am playing on my Switch. I just bought it since it was on sale a while back. Turns out it was a great decision (even though a part of me feels extremely weird not playing Doom on a PC but hey times change I guess).

And I can't wait to make the time to play Augur;Zenith - it looks amazing.

I've just got through Sunlust. First time playing a magewad on UV instead of HMP, and you can imagine what a step up that was. Only got through it thanks to hours of desperate running while praying for infighting, and more saves than Gordon Banks.

It was amazing, incredible depth of thought and effort in the design.

But for my skill level, I would like to take step down and would appreciate recommendations on something next to give me a nice change:

- something on the fun, action side (such as Struggle or Auger:Zenith)

- Less than the full 32 levels, ideally 5-15 or so.

- Moderate difficulty

- a few different monsters (such as Eviternity)

- A sense of narrative or journey ( such as Epic 2 or Going Down)

- Not classic style map design

- Little if any much switch hunting or platforming

Thanks!

"Number One Kill The Next Generation" very good underrated old megawad (1997)

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/1killtng

I just finished Doom 64 Absolution and started Massmouth2 (which is pretty weird).

Finished playing GoopW, which is a set of three short and intense maps by @galileo31dos01 patterned partly after some maps they were inspired by (one ruins map by Memfis, and one Arrival map by Pavera). 

One aspect I really like about it that the small-scale choreography is noticeably clever. This extends just past basic monster use and encounter setups. It's periodically full of the sort of surprises that indicate stuff was thought-out rather than modeled after the usual defaults. Case in point, the m01 perched cyberdemon that everything suggests will be crushed or telefragged in place, ends up either meeting a slightly different fate -- or being used another way. 

To get the "push forward" pacing going, encounter design is very layered. Encounters flow into one another -- and not just spatially, where you're freeing multiple fights in the same area, but conceptually, with monsters reprising roles in different ways. For example, m03 has a gang of enclosed revenants appear at one point as a secondary threat, and then later on, these are lowered as the main part of another encounter entirely. m02 is especially heavy on this, as the cyberdemon not only is the core threat in a set piece, but it endangers your escape of that set piece when all is done, then finally -- like two encounters later -- you need to dash under its potential gaze for supplies to finish it off.

This type of thought-out design rather than more freeform spamming goes very well with ordinarily 'abrasive' setups, and when those they occur in GoopW, they have fun results, especially one particular setup with pain elementals. 

The palette is replaced and there are nifty new art assets and the stock-textured themes are all pretty, but I think my favorite thing visually about this is how texturing and architectural schemes are pairings that complement one another in each map -- that all three maps don't have a similar macrostructure just with a different coat of paint for each one. m01 is a courtyard of brick ruins, accordingly with a somewhat terraced use of that brick, where WOODMETAL is used in many different ways for both decorative and functional features; m02 takes after the spiky calcified rocky formations and striking deep blues of Arrival map02; and m03 is a mossy stone temple with rectangular slablike architecture and wood infixes, broken apart by some malevolent presence creeping in. It has a chasm that apparently a lot of marines have tried and failed to jump across (you'd think some of the later ones would take the hint -- although I don't expect all the zombiemen to be smart). This approach made me want to try something similar in a small map. 

This wad is pretty short. I'm sure it can be completed in under 30 minutes even with some deaths. Difficulties seem to be implemented as thoughtfully any other aspect of the design (lol at m01's HNTR turret), which means that its target audience should extend even to fans of gentler maps. 

On 11/5/2021 at 2:39 AM, Steveb1000 said:

But for my skill level, I would like to take step down and would appreciate recommendations on something next to give me a nice change:

Heartland is something I would recommend. 7 maps of pure greatness from Skillsaw. Great aesthetics and gameplay, with some custom enemies/weapons to spice up the gameplay.

Another good recommendation is 1000 lines 3 It is a 32 map megawad, but the maps are short and punchy on average while being accessible on HMP and below. Also features custom enemies.

Played Bad Religion by NaturalTvventy, who you might know as the genius behind the classic Ultimate Doom megawad 

Heard this one described as essentially a grab bag of experiments, and that was what it felt like. The initial setting is an oblong blood-soaked yard decorated with pentagrams, ringed by all sorts of towers with spiky protrusions at their tops, the spiky facades of hellish buildings cutting into the landscape. And the adventure is a twisting trek through the hodgepodge innards of all of that, where you periodically loop back outside to a big fight in the yard. 

You meet a very diverse cast of monsters (many imp variants, mancubus and cyb variants, and more -- the one that made me laugh is the "double chaingunner" lol) and pick up, compared to the runtime, a massive extended arsenal of weapons. Probably the coolest in theory is that mancubi drop their cannons, which you can use and dual-wield yourself -- but the lack of an impact sound or effect means these don't feel especially satisfying to use. Some are definitely tongue-in-cheek: you get both an "Alpha Rifle" (a slot 2 weapon) *and* later on, a "KDIZD Rifle" (a slot 6 weapon). The rate at which you encounter new monsters and weapons and the relative extraneousness of most of them definitely drives home the "one-off experimentation" feel. 

My favorite "experiment" was definitely the familiar Doomsphere: a temporary 4x boost in power that obscures your vision with red haze, used a handful of times throughout. With a layout that is fairly open in places, with many points of convergence in sight or comfortable range of many different groups of monsters, the map both tempts you to use it aggressively (ammo can get tight if you don't find one or two good ways to use a Doomsphere throughout playing) and encourages you to use it smartly. That seems like good use of that powerup to me -- many options, plan and prioritize which ones to take advantage of. 

My second favorite might actually be the more modest "soul harvester," which is a simple imp-like monster that fires a homing projectile that is even weaker than a regular imp projectile. It's not powerful or anything, but it is dynamic to fight if you don't want to simply face-tank everything it fires. Avoiding its projectile keeps you moving. 

What's keeping the whole experience together somewhat is the relative resource scarcity. It's not super restrictive, but you still have to act strategically or hunt down the many secrets in the bizarre spaces of the map to not run out of ammo, and this gives a throughline to the gameplay and encourages you to understand some of the nuances of the modded elements. The Alpha Rifle for example isn't a DPS machine by any means, with a rate of fire only a bit higher than the pistol -- but each bullet it fires does three or four times more damage than usual, so it becomes a go-to at certain points. 

To feel more like a cohesive map, there would probably need to be some backstory suggesting why all this modded stuff is here, or maybe a more themed approach to monster use. That is leaking through in places (the imps that fire HK projectiles mostly appear in zones slick with slime or that are greener). Many other aspects are already strong. Like the layout links together in all sorts of unusual and creative ways. For example, in an important pentagram area in the southwest accessed late, there is a central enclosure that you access far earlier, and the realization that you were there already can be cool.

As it stands, it felt more like an inspirational "idea journal" for mapping around modded elements. The experiments that clicked for me, along with the ones that didn't but had a clear improvement, already gave me an idea or two.

Not gonna lie, I’m double dipping on Augur;Zenith. I’ve never played a map set twice in a row, but I just can’t get enough!

[Sorry I thought I was posting in the General discussions section, my bad]

Took about a 2 month break. Not on purpose. My only pair of earphones gave out completely so I was without those, did not want to play without audio especially since I was grinding out full game doom 2 runs at that time. Got earphones again and trying to unrusty. So I'm getting around to Hell Revealed. I know what I'm getting myself into. Not gonna take it in one big chunk like I usually do with wads. Just beat map 9, Knockout, a couple minutes ago I know how annoying some of these maps can get. On map 11 now, which if I remember is when it starts getting difficult. Might beat half today and tomorrow and then do the rest of the wad some other time, just want to unrusty is all. Probably gonna wash the taste out of my mouth with something like Requiem.

Currently UV-maxing Sunlust saveless. I just hit my third road block at map 20, where the difficulty ramps up to an insane amount. Hopefully it doesn't take too much grinding to beat.

Playing BTSX on HMP saveless, pistol start. I found myself enjoying more modern WADs by lowering the difficulty down to HMP, even HNTR.

Playing at the moment Syringe and Preacher, i readed them on the Wadmazine and it's plays really nice.

Just made it to the third episode of Ancient Aliens this afternoon. I’m coming back after a 7 month break. Also playing around some with Scythe 2.