The DWmegawad Club plays: Doom 404

[Magnusblitz]

MAP20: Portal

100% kills, 1/3 secrets

 

Hard, but I can't say it's that much harder than the maps previous. I was playing pretty well early on, and most of my deaths came at the end fight due to losing track of revenants and suddenly eating a one-shot kill rocket from my flank, as health/armor is low. Also not being able to see monsters because of all the goddamn caco corpses I put in the left tunnel out of the slime pit. I'd actually move the first AV teleport to that room I think to give it more corpses to play with than in the red hallway, but that's just me (I'm not sure if the teleports are randomized again?) All in all, I do like the way everything opens up and provides a fun little track to run around in.

 

Aesthetic complaint: linedef 130 feels like it should be textured with something else since it doesn't match any of the nearby wall textures.

[Capellan]

 

9 hours ago, TheOrganGrinder said:

So not just the expecting demonic portal to Hell, but also kind of a... web portal?  I'm grasping at straws here.

 

You're thinking about this too hard. :)  Portal is a computer term, and the map has a portal to hell.  That's all there is to it.

 

 

3 hours ago, Magnusblitz said:

Aesthetic complaint: linedef 130 feels like it should be textured with something else since it doesn't match any of the nearby wall textures.

 

I can actually spare the lines to do the same thing on that side of the opening as I did on the other, so that's what I will do instead.

 

 

[Spectre01]

MAP19 - “Crash” FDA (1/3 secrets): d404-S01-19-FDA.zip

More like "Crush" am I right? Disappointing to discover that crushers are monster-blocked and can't be used on enemies. Otherwise, I had some fun with this one.

[Phobus]

MAP19 - I had to start carefully here, as I was low on health from the previous map. This kind of screwed me, to be honest, as I used up the health supplies for the first half of the map getting up to 100, so when the Revenants and AVs started turning up and the hit scanners were more dangerous, damage was near-enough inevitable and I just didn't have anything to patch myself up with. The secret with the crusher in the first room is very cool, but didn't give much unfortunately (it was the last one I saw, anyway), as is the transformation in the red key room (I honestly didn't realise I was back in the same room, to begin with). The crushers didn't seem to be doing much for me, in that they may have got one or two enemies in the starting room and one got me when I went back to the plasma secret to restock.

 

MAP20 - Limping into this map was a nightmare. The initial wave of enemies was a decent high pressure scenario where coming in with a fair bit of ammo was good, but the low health and armour was terrible. Then I tried to make some progress and it was like every Revenant was rolling 6-8 every time it caught me. As there's quite a few of them and space gets limited by the waves at times, I started losing patience and had to resurrect to stop myself getting properly annoyed. The final wave losing the damaging floor didn't really help, as I'd not found the secret armour and was taking too many hits. I was kind of glad of the death exit, in the end.

 

MAP21 - I was glad to see a reduced monster count here, although the Cyberdemon and strong damaging floor meant death was never too far away. I was doing pretty well to begin with but then, sure enough, Revenants, AVs and hit scans all came out in a final wave. As I'd already become impatient with the high damaging enemies killing me off, another resurrection came out to play. I killed everything before looking for secrets, which were all reasonably well-hidden. Easy enough to find when you're not running around trying to avoid a Cyberdemon, though.

 

 

It appears you've ramped past my threshold for this morning, Capellan. Hopefully tomorrow when I'm not playing catch up it's not so bad.

[Capellan]

21's a good map for continuous players to consider stepping down a difficulty level, don't forget, since it's a fresh start after the death exit.  And fair warning: there are some nasty maps still to come.

 

For the record. map19's crushers are almost all marked with block monster lines because when I tried the map without, it was total demon suicide out there :)  Only the small crusher on the RL might kill some.  On the other hand, the crushers are still very handy projectile blockers in some of the fights.

[gaspe]

MAP21: It has a good vibe of the "opener of the last episode", being short with a low monster count but still tricky. You have to be careful of the cyberdemon but it was easy to use it to clean the place. It's better to hit the switch at the center of the map (that will release 2 AVs) after you deal with all the monsters in the closets.

[TheOrganGrinder]

So having taken a stab at this map on Hurt Me Plenty and encountered frustration, I think I'm going to take you up on that suggestion and step down to Hey, Not Too Rough for the remainder of the playthrough.

 

MAP21: Daemon

 

...Not that stepping the difficulty down a little helps outrageously on this one, since (as far as I can tell) it represents a fairly modest change in monster numbers and types.  Admittedly, much of that is on me since it wasn't until after I'd stepped the difficulty down that I realised the mid-map waves of reinforcements and the arch-vile sandwich were on two separate triggers and didn't have to emerge simultaneously; live and learn (or die and learn) I suppose.  Otherwise, we've got the WAD's first Cyberdemon as a wake-up call at the start of this new episode; between that and the shift in the environment and theme, we're pretty plainly being told "no free rides from here on out."  The pressure from the Cyberdemon kept me from hunting for two of the map's three secrets until the very end, though one of them (I think the better-hidden of the two) seems like it'd be a more useful tool against the arch-viles than the strictly optional cyberdemon.

[Hells Kitchen]

I gave MAP20 a crack on ITYTD on pistol start upon learning that difficulties are used in this mapset. Honestly, it was a fun, high octane experience, and I like the map layout and visuals. I especially like the concrete rising out of the nukage floor near the end. But on UV even on continuous, it is completely fucked in the face, and I've gotten fucking headaches for real, put me into shit moods, and was just about ready to put a sledgehammer into my comp while rage screaming every swear known to humankind. FUCKEN!

 

I want to see what the rest of this wad has to offer, dunno, may have to start fresh from MAP20 on low difficulty. I may have to relinquish my weapons and start off the new episode on maybe HNTR. Well, I know for a fact every weapon is available on the lowest difficulty so I guess I won't be put out much...

 

Yeah, I'm going to start fresh on HNTR on MAP20 and see how that goes. 

 

Edited October 22, 2018 by Hells Kitchen

[Hells Kitchen]

6 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

MAP19 - “Crash” FDA (1/3 secrets): d404-S01-19-FDA.zip

More like "Crush" am I right? Disappointing to discover that crushers are monster-blocked and can't be used on enemies. Otherwise, I had some fun with this one.

 

So that explains why none of the buggers bothered to get squashed :D 

[Capellan]

8 hours ago, TheOrganGrinder said:

...Not that stepping the difficulty down a little helps outrageously on this one, since (as far as I can tell) it represents a fairly modest change in monster numbers and types. 

 

Stepping down a difficulty will generally mean a reduction in monster count (ballpark would be 15-20%, but unlike @Steve D I don't use an actual formula, so it will vary from map to map exactly how much), and a little bit more health and ammo.

 

 

7 hours ago, Hells Kitchen said:

Yeah, I'm going to start fresh on HNTR on MAP20 and see how that goes. 

 

I think that is definitely a good idea.  The point is to have fun, after all!

 

 

Oh, yeah, I should mention that MAP21 is also a good time for continuous players to download the latest version of the wad (link in the OP), as there are minor fixes to various things, and you're effectively a pistol starter for this one map.

[Summer Deep]

MAP21:  First Cyberdemon, but he's not too difficult, as there's plenty of cover and he might also have been weakened by the Hell Knights and others. Tricky finale, but thankfully not so much spamming required as in some recent maps. The AVs can be a problem as no plasma weapons are provided, so quick and accurate response with rockets required. Had to play without armour as I was unable to find the required secret, though anyone desperate enough could always try an AV jump (not recommended without armour, LOL).

101% kills, 2/3 secrets.

 

MAP22:  With the provision of rockets as the main ammo, and numerous spectres wandering around all over the show, the map
might as well have been entitled Blow Yourself Up, Why Don't You Babe? or similar, though the dynamic might in theory
shift to some degree should the player discover the Berserk pack in good time. In fact, I found it right at the end, but
its 100% health boost did make it possible to survive long enough in the lava lake to take out the last two Arachnotrons,
who would otherwise have been out of range.

100% kills, 1/3 secrets.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP22: Terrorbyte

 

Variations on a theme; instead of a Cyberdemon blowing you up with rockets as in the last level, you're given plentiful opportunities to blow yourself up here, with a great throng of demons and spectres milling about in the dark ready to eat explosives at uncomfortably close range.  It feels like the map is at its most dangerous right at the start, and then after collecting the yellow key, when hitscanners are in play and you're less free to adopt a clinical approach to dissecting the demonic hordes.  The choice of secrets is interesting; each gives you the ability to neutralise one aspect of the map's three-pointed difficulty paradigm in a different way.

[Phobus]

Ok, I've taken Capellan's advice and got the latest Doom 404. Also took the excuse to update GZDoom to 3.6.0, which meant replaying MAP21. Much as I suspected, the map isn't so bad when you know what's coming and where the secrets are. I still took a lot of damage and caught an unfortunate rocket splash as I was making my escape at the end (I thought the Cyberdemon was distracted...) but in a fresh frame of mind, with foreknowledge, the map is fine.

 

MAP22 - So coming into here with about 43 health and around 50% armour, I felt very fragile racing around the cave taking hits of attrition from shotguns and desperately avoiding my own splash damage with the wealth of Demons, Spectres and Lost Souls. As I got into it, I actually quite enjoyed this map. Health and armour felt scarce, even with the secret berserk pack (chained from the secret radsuit). I didn't see how to get the light amplification visor, so just left it (whilst the room is still dark in GZDoom, Spectres were still in the "barely visible" bracket at any dangerous range). The big wave of enemies released after the yellow skull pickup was easily cheesed from the starting room, which I'm glad of, as if I'd have been running around, I'd have definitely killed myself at some point. I like this map. It's nice to be a bigger threat to myself, for a change, and not be constantly ganked by Revenants and AVs.

[Capellan]

By modern standards, 404 doesn't even have all that many revenants or arch-viles!

 

Spoiler

165 and 38 respectively, in UV.  That's like, one map of Scythe :)

 

[Phobus]

That, I suspect, is more due to the delay in introducing them ;) Perhaps "constantly" was an exaggeration for this map set, but it does feel pretty accurate for my recent Doom experience in general.

[gaspe]

MAP22: It's a gimmick level in a dark cave with pinkies, specters and you have mostly rockets as ammo. The secret berserk that "requires" to find the secret rad-suit before is a very neat idea.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP21: Daemon

100% kills, 2/3 secrets

 

This one has some tricky encounters, but as @Phobus said upon replay, they're easily defeatable with proper planning and some foreknowledge (so yeah, a few deaths to learn the level here). Step 1 for me was using the cyberdemon as a personal rocket turret assistant to infight and clear out everything else for me. Step 2 was setting off the trigger on the central island without killing my personal rocket turret so he could keep clearing out monsters for me. I did kill the cyber before actually hitting the switch and unleashing the AVs, and it helps to know what's coming and that you need to get the hell out (run into the lava teleporter) instead of sitting there asking to be fried. I was low on rockets so I had to shotgun the first one, which took a bit of dancing but not too bad.

 

MAP22: Terrorbyte

100% kills, 1/3 secrets

 

One reason I've come around to see pistol starting as the way to play is the possibility of creating interesting setups by crafting certain weapon-vs-monster setups, and this would certainly qualify... rockets only (with a small smattering of shells, and a secret berserk) vs. demons, spectres, and lost souls in a dark cavern. Lots of chances to Good At Doom yourself, especially since the spectres are basically invisible against the dark background on software rendering. I agree with TOG's take that the map is most dangerous at the start, once you've cleared out the scattered enemies it's easier to handle things, and the group of enemies at the end feels more like a wall (to stop you from using the ledge to abuse the demon horde) than a real threat.

[Capellan]

1 hour ago, Magnusblitz said:

MAP22: Terrorbyte

One reason I've come around to see pistol starting as the way to play is the possibility of creating interesting setups by crafting certain weapon-vs-monster setups, and this would certainly qualify... rockets only (with a small smattering of shells, and a secret berserk) vs. demons, spectres, and lost souls in a dark cavern.

 

There's a reason there is no plasma or SSG on map21, and that reason is continuous players :)

[Capellan]

Just a heads up to everyone that I'm going to make some changes to maps 29 and 30 over the next couple of days.  This is mainly to make a potential issue with map29 invisible to the player (though as an added bonus it also it lets me deliberately exploit certain engine rules to help differentiate map difficulty settings).  The existing version is still fully playable, mind you, I just think the new version is better. :)

[Phobus]

MAP23 - Fuck me, there are a lot of Arch-Viles in this map. Mancubi, too. As is something of a theme here, health provisions are low (especially coming in with 40-odd health) and damage potential is high. There's only a few zombies to provide the threat of hit-scan attrition, but a lot of the enemies are sniping from the edges and up high, meaning you have to get into a room to really clear it, which leaves you exposed. I frequently found myself under 20% health - particularly whenever I'd built myself back up a bit, normally because something I'd not seen had caught me out. The theme mashing together tech and hell is reasonably well executed and looks pretty good, particularly taking into account the line restriction. I found two of the secrets and assumed the third (in the room with the COMPTALL wall standing free near the secret ledge) would follow a similar theme of spotting the texture inconsistency with one of the tech elements, but for the life of me I couldn't find it. As I already had gained an SSG from the other secret and ammo was in the 40% range across the board, I just left it in the end. I like that the map finishes up on a view of the next starting room, rather than most maps finishing in a room that opens up at the beginning of the next map.

[Summer Deep]

MAP23:  Bit of a miscalculation here. Found myself with 48/69 kills, achieved not without difficulty and some enforced use of infighting, and newly in possession of the green armour (which, as often in this wad, was too far from the start), and decided at that point to make a rush for the exit. Problem was that once the yellow key had been grabbed and the yellow door opened, there were six Archviles at large in a smallish interconnected area. One of them, together with a Mancubus, was in the exit room with the switch, and going straight in there meant guaranteed instant death. So I rushed about in a couple of semi-circles in the hope that the AV would vacate its position, with the predictable comical results. Sorry about the amateurish nature of this video clip compared with what most people post on here, and there's also a few seconds of blank screen near the start:

 

Came back to this later and found that it was perfectly possible to finish with 100%+ kills with the resources provided, and that there didn't need to be more than two AVs in the arena at any one time. 

73% kills (later 101%), 2/3 secrets.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP23: Biomatrix

 

If there's a theme to this one I feel it's in the choice of textures rather than the gameplay, with fleshy walls the predominant aesthetic and much of the map spent wading through blood or trudging across snakelike intestinal patterns.  The gameplay itself seems to hinge on the collection (and later use) of the yellow key as trigger points for enemy reinforcements prominently including mancubi and arch-viles, with enough intensity to make the player sweat but a little less of the deliciously capricious cruelty that was on display in some earlier ambushes.  I feel perhaps as though I'm being lulled into a false sense of security here, and that what's ahead is going to be outright mean.

[gaspe]

MAP23: It's really tough on pistol start, low ammo and very low healthis given. I found only the secret plasmagun in the first area, the map was doable but I had to cause infighting when possible. At the YK you have to be careful of the AVs that will appear on the nearby areas, then a group of mancubi will guard some due ammo but the map is over at that point. I liked the visual theme of the map but I gave up on finding the other 2 secrets, the texturing itself is messy with rock, flesh and tech mixed everywhere and playing to spot the different texture there isn't fun, at least now I know what methods to use for the next maps.

[VGA]

For fuck's sake there are some annoying difficulty spikes, that hazard suit near the blue key in MAP11 should not be behind a wall. And on MAP18 there should be a thin corridor amid the slime.

 

I mean, for fuck's sake.

[Capellan]

I've updated maps 29 and 30 - link in OP.

[Spectre01]

Voting for next month should be open, so get out and vote!

+++ A.L.T.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP23: Biomatrix

100% kills, 0/3 secrets

 

Definitely a hot start for pistol starters, as the supplies you want are guarded by baddies so you'll keep wanting to push forward looking for something else, which just continues the cycle. Didn't help to have those two SSGs and PG taunting me from out of reach and I never found any of the secrets, even after looking (after looking them up in the map editor, just didn't think enough about pattern recognition). Might take a few tries to learn where the AVs are so you don't set them off before you have the resources to deal with them - for example, don't open that yellow door before picking up all the rockets the mancs on the yellow key ambush were hiding. There's plenty of pillars to use as cover though, so as long as you don't get too flustered you can make it through.

[VGA]

I do enjoy 404 so far despite the two difficulty spikes

 

+++ A.L.T.

+++ Avactor

Edited October 26, 2018 by VGA

[Summer Deep]

I'd like to nominate this one:

 

+++ MEMENTO MORI 2

 

Seems to be the only well known megawad from the 'classic' 1996-97 period that hasn't been featured in this thread yet.

 

Edited October 25, 2018 by Summer Deep

[Pirx]

MAP31 - “Nazi Shooter!”

 

lol, that generic title. the map plays like your stereotype wolf3d to doom map conversion: oversized architecture, clashing wolfenstein textures, cartoony ss guards, even the swastika in the floor's architecture. i had some ammo problems from pistol start, even had to punch 2 ss dudes, then the rest was smooth sailing, given the absence of more powerful enemies, so at least it's done quick.

 

 

 

MAP32 - “Thule”

 

so apparently a bunch of nazis were guarding the alien dimension (perhaps so nothing escapes out of it? as they're facing the door?)
said dimension is infighting paradise, run quick circles, stir much shit, shoot the 2 archviles that appear safely from above. i found it rather easy and fun to play.

 

 

MAP16 - “DeFrag”

 

e1m1 tribute, starts similarly, gets tougher quick. several maps in 404 have enemies warping in at some point, and this one makes no exception. killing the vile quickly and getting past the cacos to the rocket launcher is important. i still ran out of ammo and cowardly went to the exit.

 

 

 

MAP17 - “CPU”

 

straightforward map, you descend into a base that gets progressively darker, with bad guys mostly in front of you, and there's the spider mastermind, in a previously walled-off section. the spider fight in itself is amusing due to the mass of imps around, they'll hit the spider and get mercilessly chaingunned in return. same for the 2 revs behind bars. upon returning, you find the area in front of the blue door you passed before filled with monsters. shoot the archvile (you should have plenty of rockets), stand in front of the rest and laugh at them how they bash their heads in, then exit.

 

 

MAP18 - “Bad Sector”

 

you can't hold your ground with only a shotgun, surrounded by nukage, so rush them, and you're safe when you reach the ssg. you can start some infighting with the manc squad here and get armed quickly. then there's the pool with the plasma gun where i had a pretty good idea of what was to come, i collected the rocket boxes, saw the radsuit, picked up the plasma gun and ran... died, however, because there were 2 archviles, not one, and i didn't notice that one still had line of sight. so, another try, i grabbed plasma and ran out to where i had killed the manc squad, cleared that place and found the other vile at the exit, where he didn't cause much trouble (the barrels were also very helpful). so that was a more effective way to play it, although not the fastest.

 

 

 

MAP19 - “Crash

 

crash starts with some crushers. i tried getting the revenants under them for some time, they were apparently too dumb for such a simple task, so i just shot them (read the comment on the monster blocking lines only afterwards). interesting room transformation indeed. i expected something bad to come out of the uac container all the time, eager to blow up the barrels around it, but apparently there was nothing hidden inside. now i could see there were 2 archviles again at the red key and dealt with them. one caco fell right on the red key, leaving me wondering where the thing was. fight number 2 at the crushers. the shotgunners at the exit were the nastiest surprise by far, didn't see them and almost got killed at the end.

 

 

 

MAP20 - “Portal”

 

incidentally, this was the first map i tried right after downloading 404, and it gave me the impression of a much higher overall difficulty. it's pretty tough from pistol start as the interconnected layout allows monsters to get at you from several directions, first and foremost a healthy number of cacos that were soon clogging the corridor so i could not see others coming. i grabbed the rocket launcher at the start, jumped into the corridor to the right, and cleared room after room from here. so you leave the corrupted cyberspace here and go to hell.