Scythe 2 Completed

After over four years, Erik Alm has finally completed Scythe 2, a megawad which won a Cacoward in 2005, even in an unfinished state with three of the levels missing. It is now a full, 32-level megawad, and numerous bugfixes have been made to the previously existing levels. This new version can be downloaded from any idgames/ mirror you wish, and can be played with any limit-removing source port. Don't miss it!

Sweet! Hope there's going to be more speedruns for the last maps now to round out the existing collection. :)

I think I'll add a couple sentence addendum to Scythe 2's Cacoward entry and just mention the completion of the last 3 maps this year.

Bloodshedder... can you put this in the entry one line below the existing scythe2 text...

Followup: In 2009, Erik Alm completed the final 3 maps, that were missing from this build, and various bug fixes. This only reaffirms Scythe 2 as one of the best projects available for Doom... whether it be 2005 or 2009.

yesssss I needed an excuse to play this again.

Excellent news! Time for another playthrough.

It's great that Scythe 2 has been completed, but...

...these last three maps are a huge disappointment compared to the rest of Scythe 2. Map28 is all about BFG, and aside the first and last fights it isn't particularly challenging if you're used to that kind of maps. Towards the end ammo starts to run dry, so you might actually end up running out of cells if you aren't careful. Layout is much simpler than what you might expect from Erik.

Map29 is incredibly frustrating. The evil marine's placement, the cramped yellow skull "catacombs" with way too little ammo, the lava caves and, well, all that fucking lava that takes most of the space in the whole map with only one radsuit in the entire map and very little health just makes this incredibly, incredibly dull. Also the BFG trap is wtf. It's possible to lure the afrit to infight with the cyber, but pulling that off due to rockets, the afrit wanting to sit in its cave and all that FUCKING LAVA makes that one hell of a tedious exercise in patience.

Map30 has a nice theme to it, but the main area's layout doesn't lend itself very well to the kind of fights you're going to have there. Also, way too fucking many afrits. They aren't fun anymore in such numbers.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I can't believe it yet. I despaired of completion of the awesome megawad at one time.
New 3 maps are fantastic! Erik, thank you for great maps ,and congratulation.

Does it work in co-op now? If so, it's time to load that shit up again.

Heh, I wish I could map like that.

Bucket said:
Does it work in co-op now?

Yeah, it even had at least one bug fix to improve coop support.

Scuba Steve said:

Bloodshedder... can you put this in the entry one line below the existing scythe2 text...

I already had it re-read the text file, I'm not going to manually edit it.

Bloodshedder said:

I already had it re-read the text file, I'm not going to manually edit it.

I think Scuba means in the Cacowards article on it from a couple years back.

I think he wants that added under the Cacoward 2005 text for Scythe2.

EDIT: Heh.

myk said:

Yeah, it even had at least one bug fix to improve coop support.

Does that include the monster count or something in one of the later maps that made servers explode?

Hmm, I don't remember that issue on Scythe 2 itself. Was that on Skulltag or ZDaemon?

I've experienced issues of that sort on ZDaemon, but I've been on Skulltag in very heavily populated levels, including one with like 5000 monsters, and the server withstood it.

I managed to play through the final three levels in Skulltag's multiplayer simulator mode last night (Basically so that I would respawn every time I died and not have to replay the level).

I found Map28, while it was pretty good, was essentially a BFG fest, with enough energy cells to keep the gun firing the green balls of doom for a long time (and infinitely if you turn on respawning ammo). Many many BFG blasts later, I cleaned the level out and found the exit.

Map29 seemed kind of out of place, considering it's the last level before the boss in an epic megawad of epic difficulty. You have to turn on respawning rad suits though, otherwise the level is basically unplayable, since there isn't nearly enough suits to go around, especially given the monster population. Personally, if I was doing a Map29 for a wad like this, I think something along the lines of Hell Revealed 2's Map29 would have suited this megawad a lot better.

Map 30 was an epic battle, though it suffers from "throw mass ammounts of ammo and health at the start then let the player destroy masses of monsters" syndrome. Also, you need to trek through some space portals which send you through some scenes of Scythe 2 past, then summons more reinforcements when you return to the main area. Rinse and repeat this a few more times and you'll eventually make it to the end, where undoubtedly walk through the last space teleporter packed with 200/200 health, full ammo, and a BFG ready to fire at whatever is on the other side...

And there lies a Romero head right in front of you. One BFG blast later and you're done. I kind of expected some sort of epic boss spawner battle (reminiscent of other wads done in HR-style, and what you see at the end of most megawads done in Doom2 style), but I guess it was just not to be.

Scythe 2 version 2?
The text still says that three levels are missing.

Either the mirror you're getting it from hasn't updated its files yet or you missed the update line in parenthesis.

First alternative.
It’s beautiful.

Secondly - it's legendary, no matter how you look at it. Amazed this came out too, I never gave a thought to Erik finishing it too :O

Jodwin said:

It's great that Scythe 2 has been completed, but...

...these last three maps are a huge disappointment compared to the rest of Scythe 2. Map28 is all about BFG, and aside the first and last fights it isn't particularly challenging if you're used to that kind of maps. Towards the end ammo starts to run dry, so you might actually end up running out of cells if you aren't careful. Layout is much simpler than what you might expect from Erik.

Map29 is incredibly frustrating. The evil marine's placement, the cramped yellow skull "catacombs" with way too little ammo, the lava caves and, well, all that fucking lava that takes most of the space in the whole map with only one radsuit in the entire map and very little health just makes this incredibly, incredibly dull. Also the BFG trap is wtf. It's possible to lure the afrit to infight with the cyber, but pulling that off due to rockets, the afrit wanting to sit in its cave and all that FUCKING LAVA makes that one hell of a tedious exercise in patience.

Map30 has a nice theme to it, but the main area's layout doesn't lend itself very well to the kind of fights you're going to have there. Also, way too fucking many afrits. They aren't fun anymore in such numbers.

Well, as sad as it sounds, I'd have to agree. MAP27 was the highlight in the old release and a fitting conclusion. Now it leads into the most insane slaughtermap I have ever seen (sorry, no fun at all, unlike maps 23-25.)
MAP29 would have been fine if it wasn't for the lava.
MAP30 was a good idea - if it hadn't been made a all-out slaughtermap.

To summarize: I'm sorry to say but this is not what I was hoping to make Scythe 2 complete. I prefer it in its incomplete old form that ends on a very high note in the best map of the entire WAD.

I wasn't going to try this out right now but with Graf's comment I just have to.

I do like the three new maps (especially when played with my WIP weapon mod which makes the difficulty skyrocket :P) but all that seems out of place is their order. I think the order should have gone 29, 26, 28, 27, 30, or thereabouts.

Also, what's MAP28's music? It certainly sounds like a Symphony X midi but I've been unable to find it elsewhere.

(Symphony X, by the way, provided the midi tracks for Scythe MAP23, MAP26 and MAP29, and Scythe II MAP30).

Jimmy91 said:

Also, what's MAP28's music? It certainly sounds like a Symphony X midi but I've been unable to find it elsewhere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhGA96-B2hc

Map 30 is very epic! Good work!

Extra bonus points for leaving out the rocket aiming puzzle. I can't remember the last megawad that spared me.

I had somehow never got around to playing Scythe 2, but what with the new release, I recently started playing it and I gotta say it is probably the best thing I have played in a while. Exactly the sort of megawad I really enjoy.

Salutations Erik.

I'm thrilled...and pissed I won't be able to play it for another 3 weeks on account of not having access to my own computer. I'm really interested to see how MAP30 came out (all I know is that it can't have the Icon of Sin, which is good really.)

Thanks for the comments everybody.

I guess it's impossible to please everybody. Also, I am not really one to strive for perfection, I just do stuff and let it turn out however it turns out. The fact that map27 did turn out so well was part of the problem why the last 3 maps were not finished back in 2005, I just couldn't top it.

Oh well, it's great to have this one finished so that I can move on to other projects.

So what other projects now?

Erik said:

Thanks for the comments everybody.

I guess it's impossible to please everybody. Also, I am not really one to strive for perfection, I just do stuff and let it turn out however it turns out. The fact that map27 did turn out so well was part of the problem why the last 3 maps were not finished back in 2005, I just couldn't top it.

Oh well, it's great to have this one finished so that I can move on to other projects.

Imo, just making stuff and let them turn out the way however they turn out, is really the way to go for good creativity, if you strive for perfection and for rules it's easy to get stuck, at least in my opinion. Also it's more fun to be creative this way and imo, the result may turn out better as well.

Yeah, what other projects are you planning?