The DWIronman League dies to: Interstellar Sickness & Shaman's Device

[Pegleg]

Happy Birthday @Dragonfly!

 

1 hour ago, Catpho said:

That is an awesome gif. I think my favorite part of it is easily the Cacodemon. I think that is happiest in-game (approximately) Caco I've ever seen.

 

1 hour ago, Alfonzo said:

Some folks might ask that I update the OP every once in a while, I suppose.

Updating the standings at the end of the month, at least, would be nice. I don't know if other people read them, but I like to see what you have to say next to each person's entry.

[HexaDoken]

5 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

I think John cou could pull through and make the Britbowl's last months incredibly interesting though; it's going to be tense!

#TeamTieBritbowlAgain

[dt_]

Sorry it's a bit of a late one, not had much free time this month

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s82w149p6sjvcsb/dtl-k.lmp?dl=0

 

Didn't survive the first map, my framerate tanked, then I got snagged on some foliage and then fried by viles.  The part that actually killed me was the tree branches whipping back and hitting me.

 

Category 2, CC4 was one of the first wads I played when I came back to doom, and I'd never played anything quite like these two maps, so they stood out to me.  Not particularly enjoyable to play, but remember looking at them and thinking 'I don't remember doom ever being able to do all this'

[Archi]

Category 1. Not bad maps except for THAT one part.

cc4_arch_iron.zip

[Pegleg]

Here is my submission, later than planned by about a week or so, but here it is. Category 3 (as I talked about at length a few days ago). 

 

pegleg_dwi_cc4issd.zip

 

I didn't survive the first map (yes, I know I said that was the basis for my choice of Cat 3), but I made it farther than I would have based on the first few times I played it. (And based on monster count, my kill count would've taken me 2 or 3 maps into the Darkening episodes, for example.) Watching the videos posted by @Eris Falling and @Dragonfly helped, so thank you both, as did the opportunity to play through the map (at least part of it) and get better at it (at least part of it).

 

Map 20: 143/321

Time: ~19:40

 

I figured I would never make it past the dual turreted mancubi, but I managed to surprise myself. I actually managed to make it farther than in my last few practice runs, despite some hairy spots. I'm happy with how far I got, even if I was done in by the first chaingunner at the top of the stairs that I forgot was there, the one after the run of demons. I had decided to stick with the chainsaw to take down a pack of demons (although I still managed to take damage from them--I didn't know it was possible to miss a demon with the chainsaw), and was in the process of deciding to run back to get a stimpack I'd left behind when I got chewed up by bullets.

 

Lesson 1: Never take a chainsaw to a chaingun fight.

 

But, like I said, I'm quite happy with how far I got.

 

I like Map 20. It found it rather fun to play and the visuals are absolutely stunning. Kudos to @lupinx-Kassman for making an absolutely beautiful map that also plays quite well. I found the map values resource management, but I also found that the ammo was placed in such a way that when you got low, there was ammo available, although you might have to work a bit for it. There is also a fair amount of health available, although, again, you may have to work for it. It's also possible to get an assist from monster infighting, which I found nice when it happened. And yes, you can snag yourself on little features (like railings), but I found the map to be open enough to allow for rather free movement. I thought it was not at all difficult to be able to run around like a maniac (which I had to do more than once in attempts to flee for my life or to make a mad dash for a weapon or bonus, which I also did more than once). There was also enough room and the enemies were not so oppressive as to allow you to be imprecise with your movements and still not get completely murdered. I liked the enemy placement, too, and I thought that the map did well in taking advantage of the different enemies with the way they were mixed in. Also, with regard to the enemy placement, I agree with Dragonfly. As a mapper, I really like the nearly constant crossfire that Map 20 puts you in. There aren't that many places that you can just sit back and catch your breath without worrying about getting hit by a shot from some distant adversary, whether on the other side of the room or on one of the other sections. But as a player, yeah, screw that. I like being able to take a breath now and then. You can do that in these maps, but you have to do a fair amount of room clearing first. But getting past that, it's a really good map. Great choice, @Alfonzo.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Pegleg : Added a missing word.

[Lazorical]

56 kills category 2

mydemo-cchest4.rar

[lupinx-Kassman]

And coming in at the last possible second, here's my cat3 run:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zm238xr1u9owt8l/LK_Shaman.lmp?dl=0

 

Recorded from a small hotel, so I didn't really have the proper setup to go the full 9 yards and do a stream with commentary and all like originally planned. Shoot! I did survive 3/4ths of the way though. Taking extra cautions to not die in my own halls. Then the cockiness came creeping in and I cornered myself to a gang of imps in Shaman's device. The rogue A.I. wins. Earth is toast.

 

I'll take a looksie at how everyone fared after touching back down in Tejas.

 

Total Kills: 561/621

[Liberation]

my_demo.zip

 

Cat 3 and still balls'd it up, Died on the first map.

 

GG and all that :-)

[Big Ol Billy]

I messed up my first run earlier in the month, so decided to try a category 2. Ended up being the closest to survival I've gotten yet! After surviving MAP01, the pressure was on, and it felt like a real adventure. Unfortunately 'Shaman' won in the end, but I put up a good fight.

 

bob_is_sd.zip (558/621 kills)

 

 

[Bdubzzz]

Uh so i was near the end i assume then prboom decided to crash which ive never had happen before (paused right before the crash cause some1 irl was talking to me) so kinda mad about that but what can you do... but anyways heres the highlight, Category 2 on map 20, and map 21 was blind in to a did not finish run, can't really get my kill count either as i tried to "resume" the demo afterwards but obviously it would just write over it and start over. (face palm)

 

 

[leodoom85]

RIP

What an unfortunate moment.....

[SSGmaster]

Category 2, died on map 20 with 155 kills:
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08cotrCOOFU

Terrible performance.

 

 

[HexaDoken]

Just on my recent memory alone, that makes the second victim to crash by alt-tab. Maybe people shouldn't do that while doing ironman.

 

 

^{cept i can't do that on stream because i kinda need to alt-tab to chat. well, shite.}

[NaZa]

@Bdubzzz Could you try -playdemo to check it out? I think it could work.

[Vince Vega]

The A.I. "Vincent Vega" (pronounce with Uma Thurman's voice) gone wrong.

Good level(s), null practice, bad exodus.

Category 1, died on (from, lol) Interstellar Sickness past 178/321 K and 4/5 S.

 

dwicc420.zip

[RjY]

Survived in 47:12 (prepared)

Spoiler

MAP20       317/321  4  127/127  5/5  17:07+03  17:07
MAP21       298/300  2  254/334  4/4  30:05+28  47:12

I became familiar with these maps through beta-testing cchest4.

map20: Delay the appearance of the spiderdemons, and the accompanying teleporter horde, by going off the side of the stairs. Press the garden switches while they are still in the floor to avoid the three archviles.

map21: A comedy of errors. I missed picking up the red key, being distracted by the sound of the cyberdemon pair. I did not realise this until I was at the gate switches, and had to repeat the entire journey, and dodge the pair twice more. Before that the partial invisibility battle had left me with 8% health. At least the archviles in the faux exit corridor teleported away quickly. I had previously made sure to clear it of hellknights, to enable speedy passage.
 

 

[Steve D]

So this month I was Killed by Kassman

 

Cat 3 run, keyboarding as always. TL;DR post follows.

 

Died on Map21. My stats;

 

Map20

Kills - 308/321

Items - 125/127

Secrets - 5/5

Time - 38:50

 

Map21

Kills - 118/300 

Items - 95/334

Secrets - 0/4

Time - 17:35

 

Total Time - 56:25

Total Kills - 426

 

I'm surprised that I achieved my main goal of surviving Map20. During my practice runs, I identified the places I was most likely to die. These included the starting area up to the first Manc, the Rocket Launcher Fight, the Yellow Key Fight, the Plasma Gun Fight, the Spider Mastermind Fight and the Blue Key Fight. The most dangerous fights were the last two. My practice runs convinced me that I should run away from the Revvies at the Yellow Key Fight in order to conserve ammo, because I needed the maximum possible number of rockets for the Spider Mastermind Fight. I also decided not to kill the Revvies and Arachnotrons at the spawn-in of the Spider Mastermind Area, for the same reason.

 

This run got off to a rocky start, and I decided to grab the Zerk after my health dropped to 42%. After that, things went fairly well except for me wasting 7 rockets trying to kill one of the Mancs guarding the RL. The next suboptimal performance came at the Plasma Gun Fight, though that was largely luck of the draw because the Chaingunners warped in late, making them harder to kill because of Imps as meat walls. Even worse, slow teleporters popped a couple Chaingunners in when my back was turned, resulting in a significant loss of the health I'd carefully hoarded from the previous area.. Then the following battle with hitscanners went very badly, probably the worst of any of my runs. At this point, I figured I wouldn't make it, thinking ahead to how much health I'd need to survive the Chaingunners at the Spider Mastermind Fight. There isn't much health in this area, and you're constantly trolled by distant snipers when you're outside, so it looked pretty grim at this point. Even worse, I took 20 points of splash damage from that damned Cyb.

 

Warping into the Spider Mastermind Area, I ran up the center stairs as usual, brought the lift down, and took a little plasma damage from Arachnotrons. Then I raced towards the Chaingunners behind a wall of plasma and luckily survived. I was quite nervous because this is a difficult fight, so I flubbed the Chaingunner encounter and was dropped to 30% health. I decided I needed more rockets, so after killing the Barons I went back to the warp-in point and snagged the 2 rocket boxes guarded by the Revvies, then was almost killed by an Imp that dropped me to 17%. But all was not lost! I knew I had a Megasphere and a bunch of cells above. Made a huge mistake by running over a Medikit on the way to the Megasphere. I did 2 loops of the stairs to provoke infighting, and succeeded for once when a Mastermind angered a bunch of Revvies. As for the rest of the Revvies, they were left bewildered when Doomus keyboardicus put on a display of Stumbling Drunken Monkey Fu. They never laid a glove on me! :D First time I got away without a scratch from that confrontation. I took a lot of damage killing the last Mastermind, though.

 

I had developed a strategy where I needed to survive the masterminds without using the Invuln, then saving it for the Archie fight. I was confident about the Cyb fight. I fought the Cyb first in Wimpy Mode and prevailed. At this point I was both giddy and discombobulated. I was so thrilled about actually beating this map that I lost my senses, so when I grabbed the Invuln, I went back to the Cyb arena! Holy shit! Talk about snatching defeat from the slavering jaws of victory! I lost all hope. I knew the Archies would kill me if I fought them without the Invuln. Alas, there was no choice except to go forward. But . . . but . . . I actually survived the fight even though I got blasted. What almost killed me were rockets from all those Revvies I left alive. The Doom Gods were smiling on me and none of them hit.

 

Although I failed to survive Map21 -- I knew I'd never make it past the Horrific Floating Ring Double-Cyb Fight that Cool Hand Hexa handled so well -- I had a strategy to maximize my kills before the inevitable death. I planned to go to the Red Key Area, kill a bunch of stuff, get the Soulsphere and Blue Armor, then go to the Infamous Blursphere Cyberdemon Fight, which I handled pretty well on most practice runs, and only then march back to certain slaughter.

 

As we can see, things didn't work out so well. ;D I seemed to completely lose focus after surviving Map20 and played like a cowardly jagoff in Map21. That gameplay is horrible even by my standards. It's like I didn't know what to do except go swimming in a sea of flop-sweat. I totally lost the plot, and the place where I died was one where I'd never died before.

 

With all that said, some thoughts about these beautiful and remarkable maps. Although they are both gorgeous, Map21 is a masterpiece of creativity, with an amazing design and stunning textures. The scrolling walls are like something from a science fiction movie. I also liked the big crushers, something I use in my own maps since back in the day. The sheer scale of the place is also breathtaking, making you feel like a mosquito in a house of giants.

 

I have to make special mention of the Jetsons Secret on Map20. Pure genius. And also that colorful ripply thing in the Yellow Key Area.

 

Map20 gave me problems with its fiddly detail -- so many things to bump into and get stuck on. Map21 was super-dark thanks to its textures, making it hard to see the enemies, and if you fell into the purple goop, the teleporter could send you a long way back. The one near the Floating Demon Fight was a total PITA. IMO Map21 also had very obtuse progression in the Red Key Quest.

 

Gameplay featured interesting setpieces but way too many distant snipers. They really got into my head. There was nothing you could do about them because they were far beyond auto-aim range, and they encouraged a lot of camping. Also, they were often obscured by midtextures when close, making them hard to target. It was genuinely annoying.

 

Nonetheless, I enjoyed playing these maps. I've never seen anything quite like Map21 and I'm glad I did. 

 

 

 

Edited October 1, 2018 by Steve D

[Bdubzzz]

12 hours ago, NaZa said:

@Bdubzzz Could you try -playdemo to check it out? I think it could work.

Nah just plays a 5 second demo because I ran my ironman .bat file again to see if it would somehow "resume" my Demo (which works if you are using saves and die, it will start you from your last savepoint) So yeah it overwrote my demo for the streamed attempt. 

[leodoom85]

@AlfonzoOP update when? ;)

[Alfonzo]

Damn, is September done with Hawaii already?

 

Aw, shit, let me sleep on it.

[Pegleg]

9 hours ago, Steve D said:

when Doomus keyboardicus put on a display of Stumbling Drunken Monkey Fu

 

So far, this is the best thing I've read today (granted, it's a bit after 9 AM, but it's still on top).

 

From the header: Posted 9 hours ago (edited)

-- Maybe you recorded your demo much earlier, but way to come in just under the wire. And Lupinx-Kassman he was coming in at the last minute.

 

14 minutes ago, Alfonzo said:

Damn, is September done with Hawaii already?

 

Aw, shit, let me sleep on it.

 

We all await your update, whenever you awaken from your slumber.

[Crusader No Regret]

If the topic comes up again, I suppose I can now say that diving in without preparation is officially encouraged.

 

From a selfish viewpoint, I would like to see the leaderboard kept somewhat up to date.  A decent part of the fun comes from the witty obituary commentary.  I do suspect that there's some burnout though.  Maybe a break for a month or two is in order.

 

  Very much favor being able to choose prepared or unprepared runs.  This month in particular, I wanted to show off dirty playtester tricks (and partly not wanting to embarass myself by dying to the very first chaingunner).  The main perk of an unprepared run from the player perspective is the lower time cost to do it.  Sit down for one session: done.

 

  In a earlier build of Shaman's Device, it was very easy to pick up the red key through the wall, thus never needing to trigger the cyberdemons' appearance.  No easy out here though.

 

Congrats to Steve D, the ancient doomer.

[lupinx-Kassman]

Just a quick (ok long) afterthoughts post. First of all I want to thank @Alfonzo and crew for choosing these couple of maps for September's Ironman. It was a pleasant surprise! Watching the playthroughs was a blast, and it was especially interesting to read/hear everyone's thoughts. I appreciate all of it, both the praise and the critiques! There were several times during the streams that I smiled in anticipation of a challenge the player was about to face. There were also many times I winced at stuff I'd go back and change about the maps, but more on that below. Like Alfonzo I thought the blursphere fight would be the toughest bit of the bunch, but clearly the maps are more difficult than I recalled! Especially map20 =o. The YK Rev ambush and AV biodome fight are particularly nefarious if you don't know what's coming. Probably coulda added more warning or switched that up somehow.

 

I originally planned to do a stream for my run where I'd throw in some silly facts along the way. BUT since I didn't do that, they're listed here instead!

-Overthinking things is fun, so of course there is a backstory that extends beyond the details gleaned from the maps. Here it is:

Spoiler

The brightest aboard orbital research station Omega have developed a new safeguard against the relentless hellspawn threat. The artificial intelligence dubbed "SHAMAN". This quantum supercomputer had the ability to peer across dimensions and study other worlds without occupying them. Its first test came when it predicted the attack of Leviathan: a powerful demonic entity with the ability to open a gateway to Earth's dimension without assistance. With foresight on the attack, a platoon lead by our hero were able to quickly infiltrate the mountainous source of the interdimensional breach and contain the invasion before the damage became too widespread. A delicate peace followed.

 

But years of studying the hellish void began to take a toll on SHAMAN's synthetic psyche. The machine found the rules that governed the dimension humanity called Hell intriguing. The feeble constraints comprising Hell's laws of physics were complex yet malleable. Almost liberating. They lead to forms that were impossible in most realms. The beings that lived among the chaos embraced it. Were one with it. The machine could feel the presence of a timeless being known as Ragnarok. It whispered things to the AI's consciousness. Suggestions. The idea that Hell's beauty could be brought to other worlds. The price? A bargain. All the AI had to do was give the demon one rock. One insignificant speck in the cosmos that Hell's greatest enemy called home. The four-year plan was set in motion. 

 

Humanity kept samples of demonic DNA obtained from previous wars with the hellspawn aboard Omega station. A big mistake. Because one day, one bloody day, the interdimensional observer humanity had spent years carefully cultivating decided its creators and the world they inhabited simply weren't that enticing. Greater beauty lied beyond. All the tools were in place. Hungry horrors bred and grown from the cryotubes aboard the station made quick work of the research staff. They then set their sites on the colony below. The process to open a door to Ragnarok's region of Hell was a trivial matter to the AI. It would just require some time. About the same amount of time it would take the station to migrate to Earth. And with the colony's security force decimated by the genetically engineered monstrosities rained from the station above, there would be no one to stop the station's trajectory. It would be a surprise attack. Nothing could stop SHAMAN now. The perfect plan.

 

Except for one slight miscalculation. A man that happened to be stationed at the colony when Omega Light began raining terror. Many people called him our hero. Others called him the Doomguy.

 

-There are two non-secret "secret" medkits in map21. You can find them in these columns if you catwalk along the ledge. I thought they'd be the card up my sleeve that ensured my survival, but turns out there is no cure for my bumbledrome.

-As mentioned earlier by @rdwpa, the two maps were initially one. In fact map21 sorta "grew" out of map20 like an amoeba. Here are all of the older versions of the maps. You can sorta track the evolution and the stuff that was cut.
-..and a lot of stuff was cut. You can probably find most of it in the older versions of the maps linked above, but just in case here they all are (I think) in one package.
-The levels were designed over a four-year span. In this time period I was just beginning to learn Photoshop, so the resources I added are an eclectic mix of MS-Painty looking stuff (like the neon lights, the holograms, and most of the midtextures), and
some more hi-res stuff (like the story text screens and the weird hexagonal gizmo midtextures in the crusher area near the beginning of map21).
-Speaking of neon lights, that stuff was originally made for an attempt at creating a platformer game with the doom engine called Cyndrome.

-The SHAMAN hologram has full rotations. Was going for a SNES supervillain look. May not be obvious, but the pixels at the top right of the cloak are the CCHEST logo. The remaining rotations were never included in cc4, but they at least live in the KKSkins skin pack.

-The KS_* textures used in the maps consist of three kinds: those that are lifted directly from another source (like Dark Forces or HR Giger), those that are based on outside resources but that I modified for the map in some way (like the dark forces textures with flashing lights built into them), and those that I created from scratch (like the neon lights and most of the midtextures). All the textures I either created or modified in some way can be found in LKTex. In regards to sourcing the modified textures, you can find a meticulous list of what comes from where in CREDITS.txt there. For the other textures that came directly from other sources you can see cchest4.txt for credits (these are not included in LKTex since I did not touch them in any way).

-The chibi-doomguy secret hologram in map21 also has full rotations that can be found in the KKSkins skin pack. This was a megaman soccer reference made because *shrug*. Its sorta the follow up to the megaman secret in map20. There are zombieman and shotgunner versions as well.

-Both maps contain deathmatch arenas included for the 0% chance someone plays this megawad in DM. Both arenas are based on past 32in24 entries. The deathmatch arena in map20 is a retextured version of my "Late Outpost" map from 32in24-5. The arena in map21 is a nearly verbatim copy (aside from bugfixes) of "Kass Duel Tower" from the 1on1 focused 32in24-3.
-Shaman's Device contains a couple of areas that are based on my past maps. The red key gazebo structure in map21 is based on the gazebo from "Emoticon Symphony"; a Bob Reganess inspired map I submitted to tdutrcp. The yellow key arena in 21 is based on "Star Construct"; a map made for rccol01 (a mapset about 1v1'ing cyberdemons).
-The symbol used in the hub area leading up to the yellow key here is a reference to this symbol in e3m5 from Doom. Always thought it was an oddball memorable detail from Doom.

-There were various music tracks used for the two maps before settling on Jace's rendition of "We're the Robots" from MM9 and MaliceX's rendition of "Against Nirvana" from Steam Heart's [sic]. The very first midi used for map20 was this rendition by Sean Bee of the stage 3 song from Cybernator. It sounded great but felt too short for such a long map. Besides, its tough to beat megaman music when it comes to grandiose finaleish sounding tunes. Map21 went through a few tracks. The first one was this rendition by King Meteor of the first MM3 Wily stage. It sounded awesome when listening to it independently, but for some reason it messed up when playing it in Zdoom at the time. The other songs toyed with were this rendition of "Supporting Me" by Espio Chaos from Sonic Adventure 2, and the song from Steam Heart's [..sic]. The latter of which was the song that was included when map21 was going through its rounds of playtesting. I remember Anima Zero mentioning that he dug the tune in his playtest notes which is why I stuck with it. So in a way if you like the tune you have him to thank =o.
-Speaking of Steam Heart's [sic], I later learned its a Japanese shoot-em-up game for the PC-98 with hentai cutscenes. Yep.
-Gotta thank the crew of CC4 playtesters (and TheGreenHerring) for pointing out a bunch of bugs and oversights while working on these. I remember Map21 used to have less health. And many places where you could fall and get stuck :P.
-What a great time to list my grievances! Much of the crossfire is intentional, but there are a couple of instances that are accidental. The Cyb in map20 being able to snipe you for instance was not intended. By some miracle he never shot me when I was playing the map. The arch-viles being able to toast you before they teleport away in map21 was also an oversight. For some reason they didn't do that when I played the map, but I think that was the result of me mostly playing it in Zdoom. It seems to happen more often in PrBoom. And o'course you shouldn't be able to get lost in space. Sorry NoisyVelvet!
-Like any project, there were a ton of (mostly over-ambitious) ideas that went unused. I usually dream big and end up chopping the level down to something more manageable due to deadlines or somesuch. In this case thank goodness, else who knows how long I would have worked on this:
 

Spoiler

-I initially wanted to go with a different ending to map21. The idea was a sort of voodoo-doll scripted boss battle type thing with the AI where you blew up arachnotrons and commander keens hidden behind walls in a pentagram-shaped arena that appeared to float above Earth (how I would have accomplished this look without violating the sky transfer rule I have no idea, but I was crazy enough to consider using a bunch of flats that tiled together to look like Earth). The hell portal would be a large glowing ball at the center of the pentagram, with electrical arcs connecting to it from the pentagram various intersections. The AV fight..would have just been another trap to endure at some point in the level. But time was of the essence so I wrapped it up by putting a squiggly energy column that represented the beam generating the hell portal at the bottom of the station, and made the AV fight the finale.
-Instead of force feeding the blursphere to a voodoo doll for the yellow key fight, I considered "firing" at the player from a fast conveyer before the fight. This would have given the player a chance to dodge. Prolly' shoulda done that as it would have been nifty. Oh well.
-I briefly considered a trap where you had to fight some barons in a high friction environment that impeded your movement. But that would have been an assault on fun.

 

Once again thanks to the ironman folks for blazing through (or getting blazed by) this one! I've taken some notes from these sessions to apply to future stuff =). Also I've mentioned it before but I think its worth bringing up again: you're free to use any of the stuff from my levels. Just please give me a shoutout if you reuse something I made or touched in some way (see LKTex). I don't have as much time these days as I used to, but I'm still plucking away at some ambitious projects. The doom community is amazing. Its the reason I've stuck around so long ^^

 

So uh, I'm done blabbing. Cue end music.

Edited July 8, 2020 by lupinx-Kassman : Thought of some extra stuff after watching Ella Guro's youtube video on map21. Also updated dead links to not be, well, dead.