The DWmegawad Club plays: A.L.T.

[Beezle]

+++ Earth, Dawn of the Dead and Classic Episode 

 

I haven't played any of these but I've heard of the last 2.

[galileo31dos01]

On 1/24/2019 at 7:39 PM, Salt-Man Z said:

+++NewDoom Community Project

One day I'll get this club to play NDCP. One day.

 

I second this. So:

 

+++NewDoom Community Project

[Demon of the Well]

Map 23 -- God is Dead

Quite the conversation-starter, "God is dead." Is it subtle, with different shades of meaning? Is it not remotely subtle at all? The answer to both questions in ALT's case is "yes."

 

Ella Guro says that while this map is officially credited to Azamael (and it certainly does evince the atmospheric quality of his other maps), much of it was actually built/finished by BeeWen, something I can readily believe having played. Apart from its engrossing nighttime atmosphere, seeming to return to the abandoned city setting of the first episode while somehow communicating a subtle sense of things coming alive and stirring in the dark, it features an enjoyably kinetic quality of progression in many places (I particularly like the flying leap out of the roofline of the darkened 'pillars' room onto the concrete walkway running along the roadway) and a mechanical complexity which adds flair and extra personality to some otherwise conceptually simple spaces, ala the 'interlock' shortcut out of the much talked about RK spiral.

 

On the topic of that spiral, I again confess feeling at least a little nonplussed as regards the strong reactions it has evoked. Of all the times in the preceding 20+ maps when ALT was not particularly good at handling the whole moving + fighting aspect of Doom play in any really dynamic way, or of choosing to emphasize a concept or mood at the expense of 'quality of life' considerations, this to me hardly seems the most jarring or offensive. A long string (literally) of brief frontal confrontations, it's far from High Art and does perhaps unintentionally belabor the point that combat-oriented design is not the WAD's strong suit, but in practice is easier to swallow than earlier spates of broadly similar play in the WAD, perhaps because it's so up-front about what it is. Perhaps this up-frontness is the issue for some...? Narratively I think this map is supposed to represent the nascent dawning of a certain dark realization, and that this long spiral in its turn is meant to feel something like the long descent into the prison beneath the Historical Society in Silent Hill 2 (for those who've played that game); peppering it with creatures to kill is intuitive enough as a piece of Doom-y design (traditionally in Doom you fight your way into the depths, you don't just mosey on in), but perhaps it would've read better if it had been conspicuously underpopulated? Would hardly be out of keeping with other parts of the WAD, after all.

 

On an unrelated note of trivia, this map is also prone to dysfunction, more serious than issues of monsters failing to teleport in this case. The lift which leads into the start of the spiral for some reason has a tiny/thin crystal sector bridge abutting the top of its northern face (presumably a hack obsessively devised make it blend with the handrail on the platform above), and sometimes this sector is never 'opened' when it's supposed to be, meaning you can't pass under it (or over it, technically) and thus can't continue/finish the map in any way (as an experiment I've tried rocket-jumping to the grey stone border and activating the switch from above, but there are no-cross lines preventing you from standing on said border, even with an RJ). Near as I can tell this is somehow/for some reason tied to your first few steps in the map--it's rather easy to skip the linedef which triggers that initial explosion (unintentionally or otherwise), and every time I've done that I've found the map to break in the way described above. Walking sedately out of the initial alcove such that the explosion triggers has always seen the problem sector open once I've arrived there, but perhaps I'm making a correlation/causation error here?

 

Map 24 -- Sturm

"This tune sounds familiar.....oh. Oh. Right. It's this."

 

* IDMUS 10 *

 

A sprawling, dark-shrouded castle yard reached via dubious nautical means, this simple map is a real rarity for ALT, a level which is dedicated first and foremost to combat for the sake of it. As others have said, conceptually there's really not a whole lot to it--there are some few pregnant moments or minutes of wandering the imposing surroundings, engaging in small misadventures here and there (the purpose/function of the short lava maze is a mystery, maybe it's a heavyhanded way of forcing/enforcing sound propagation?), and then shoe finally drops upon collection of the red skull. It's best/most efficiently handled as a simple infighting exercise (i.e. by running around outside on the fringes of the riot), though it can also be played as more of siege-style scenario if you prefer, where ensconcing yourself near and defending the one big ammo dump becomes paramount. The scattered distribution of red skull-switches is presumably meant to keep you from simply walking away from the scenario before it's even half done, though if you memorize where they are (and get the YK before it gets too lost in the storm) this setup is not very effective for said purpose, in part due to the relatively slow (and once again, unreliable) nature of the offmap closet setup, though it does seem to hit a certain point of momentum and really 'storm' for a time once it gets going.

 

More trivia: If you position yourself just so you can actually still sneak in rocket splash damage on the Romero head from certain angles, ending the map marginally early. Also for some reason there is a pile of marine corpses in one of the offmap closet spaces carefully arranged to spell out the word "EAT" on the IDDT'd automap. Okay, Az.

Edited January 27, 2019 by Demon of the Well

[Capellan]

MAP27

Crawl through some narrow canyons, then plunge into an arena fight, the toughest aspect of which is finding the stairs. Escape with the blue key and ... well, briefly crawl through some narrow tunnels, BFGing arch-viles, before the map ends. Some decent visual elements, but the gameplay definitely feels under-cooked.

 

 

[Capellan]

Oh yeah, if Earth, Dawn of the Dead and Classic Episode does actually win, I suggest we actually play Earth in the middle.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP26: Sudden Death

 

Repetitive patterns of animated walls and floors inflicting upon the player a constant sense of motion despite the static nature of the environment.  This is a terrible map to try and play while drunk.  And the blinky-lights transparent-bridges room toward the end is an equally terrible segment to try and play with a headache.

 

With that out of the way, I think the colourful nature of this map provides an interesting contrast to the dominant visual themes of A.L.T..  It's not an unpleasantly drab WAD by any stretch of the imagination, but it knows how to use colour and just as significantly how to use a lack of colour rather well, with stretches of grey and tan, naturalistic browns, and muted greens creating dilapidated environments and a mood of melancholy against which splashed of bold colour and moments of intense action really stand out.  This map, on the other hand, is vibrant to the point of excess, an endless alternating pattern of green and red fluids made all the more unnatural by the frequent right-angles at which walls intersect and the utter immiscibility of the two liquids despite the constant churning of adjacent blood- and slimefalls.  As for just what is going on here, I think this is probably the largest single chunk of such intense abstraction and artificiality that the WAD has so far offered, going beyond the surreal and the haunting and into the unreal, Bosch giving way to Escher.  I don't think this does the level any favours as a single chapter in the ongoing narrative or experience that is A.L.T.; I felt rather yanked out of what the WAD has so far been trying to do, the story it has been hinting at and the methods it has been employing.  There are places where the angular architecture feels like a deliberately weird contrast to the textures chosen, and other places where those textures don't feel like much more than a layer of sparkly animated wrapping paper applied to the surfaces of a conventional map.  The two impressions duel and clash, and regardless of which one emerges the victor, I feel the experience of the map is diminished by their clashing.

[ella guro]

several of you all are being so much harsher on these later maps than i would be, considering how novel and strange and different they are from each other. i think it is actually a very good thing that a lot of these maps are shorter and overstay their welcome towards the end because of the usual cliches of later maps having to be super hard. i personally like how much it subverts your expectations, and i would give more consideration to that when playing these maps. difficult and long maps do not equal good maps. i'm personally glad things start moving quicker from map 24-onwards.

 

MAP 25 is my favorite of this bunch because it has a lot of ideas going on at once and it's also very condensed. i also like MAP 24 a lot too even if it isn't like the best "conventional" kind of slaughter map out there because it's not really about that anyway. the dark castle setting is wonderfully realized to me.

 

MAP 27 was actually a map made by Wraith to replicate the look of the Doom 1 intermission map screen icon for Spawning Vats - hence all the rocky outdoor parts and the dome split down the middle. it's a neat idea, but the map doesn't have much else going on aside from that and this was obviously just thrown in there with the rest. oh well. still, like Map 17, it would be a lot worse if this map outstayed its welcome - which it definitely does not. thankfully the last three maps of ALT bring everything in the story back into focus.

[Crusader No Regret]

Map 14: 100% kills, 6/6 secrets

 

  A bit of a pickle on continuous, at least if you want to keep your arsenal.  Moreso if one wants to save the soulsphere to exit at 200% health.  Many monsters tucked away in out of the way locations with no reason to fight them if you don't care about 100% kills.  There is an ambush where one is locked by a 30 second door with the yellow key but the trigger is so out of the way that I ended up searching for it.  Also a shoutout to the spiders behind the blue door and a number of archviles that only show up if one goes looking for them.

 

Map 15: 100% kills

 

  The visual gimmick is blue and white, I see.  Very 8-bit looking.  Also quite short with the teleport maze being the main feature.  Find the three star panels to unlock the red key.  Life is easier by revealing the paths before triggering any of them and also by stepping on the one by the plasma gun first to bring out the archvile before it has bodies to ressurect.  Like the previous map, 100% kills is out of the way and even more troublesome to attain here due to the cacodemon spawns in the maze.  Assuming full ammo when entering Phobos Anomoly reversed, there's no reason to trigger the archvile there; I only did it for completion.

[gaspe]

MAP27: Thanks for the informations ella guro I didn't know and noticed that this is a remake of Spawning Vats as you see it on the intermission screen. It also makes sense since this map is nothing like the rest of the wad and it feels like it was put there just to fill a slot. By chance I still think that it makes for a good introduction for the very last part of ALT. I didn't play so much of Wraith's stuff but he likes to work more with Doom 1 and even in his works for Doom 2 he sticks mostly with the Doom 1 aesthetics, and this isn't an exception as you can see. There's a brief introduction in some rocky canyons and behind you can see a big metallic ziggurat. In a short time you can teleport inside it with a "trick" that the inner part is made in a separate area. At least on UV the BK part is quite tricky, the place is made of multiple tiers and the step to climb on the next level are always put on the other side so there's several back and forth to do and you also have to pass on damaging lava. You will encounter a cyberdemon but the worst are the pain elementals, the place is also high so these fuckers and the lost souls tend to go out from you sight and can block you from above. After that you can have a good look a the pyramid from the outside with a linear way that goes around it and takes you back to the starting area with the blue door. It's really cool visually, the pyramid is split in half and from the center it pours lava that falls on te pit below. The ending is a small appendix with a BFG that is given for a group of AVs.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP27: Vat

 

I've had it with this monday-to-friday spawning in this mighty fine vat!

 

This map conists mostly of a single set-piece or spectacle, the titular vat in which a mighty firefight takes place and from which the player must retrieve the level's solitary key and then escape.  So far my impression of this WAD has mostly been of large levels, expansive in both scale and running time, so despite the physical size of the vat, both its cavernous interior and the barren exterior setting through which the player must scramble, my impression here is of a relatively short and sweet experience, one big arena bracketed by Slough of Despair canyon-crawls and then we're done.  It's a neat enough setting, dominated by a structure that invokes Dark Souls and the Kiln of the First Flame as much as it does some subverted industrial process; and then it's over, with a sense that the WAD is building in intensity and picking up its pace as the languid atmsophere of washed-out dreams and faded aspirations gives way to the creeping crescendo of an undeniable nightmare.

[Capellan]

MAP28
I don't really know what actions I took were contributing to success, but I finished the map.  So yay, I guess!
 

[Demon of the Well]

+++ Earth, Dawn of the Dead, Classic Episode

 

Second choice:

 

+++ NDCP

 

(sorry Dobu)

 

Map 25  -- Dunkelheit

Similar to map 20 in many ways, this is a cool-looking and enjoyable outing, if again on the casual side. It's one of the set's most linear maps, perhaps, but this serves its strengths fairly well, leading you about a fairly set path which provides ample opportunity for goggling at the imposing scenery while partaking of a selection of nicely varied (if mostly softballed) encounters, from another somewhat rare chainsaw-centric pistol-start to a classic Gotcha! showdown later on. Fittingly enough for this mapset, the most notable challenge in the map has nothing to do with battle but rather the timed three-door switch/warp puzzle which shows up out of nowhere in the castle sanctum. Solving it is largely a matter of trial and error (with a spot of lateral thinking for one step); the very point of its design is that once you have the solution, it only takes a few seconds to clear, though impatient players or those prone to immediately going on mental autopilot the moment there are no monsters to shoot could bang their heads against it for quite some time before making progress.

 

As aforesaid, probably the map's best asset is how visually striking and evocative of a particular sense of place it is, though as with so much else in ALT this is liable to be a very subjective matter. For my part, I'm consistently impressed by any successful attempt at making the easter egg Wolf3D textures look credible rather than patently goofy across on such a large scale (and indeed, as others have said, scale is the watchword for this particular presentation), though principled aesthetes of a certain stripe will probably immediately object to the obvious tiling issues, which are more noticeable on these assets than on any other subset from the stock collection. While not comprised 100% of Doom II resources--there's a bit of Plutonia masonry, a bit of Eternal masonry, a couple of anonymous rock textures, etc.--by and large it's a very original and memorable stock scheme, one which I've never really seen anywhere else.

 

Incidentally, while it would probably be a mistake to refer to this last stretch of levels as ALT's "Hell" episode, I reckon "Dunkelheit" is about as close to a traditional (in the Doom sense, I mean) depiction of Hell as the set comes. Post-m22, the set largely abandons any further narrative development until its very end in lieu of an assortment of "What Dreams May Come" surreal vignettes. The one and basically only element tying most of them together thematically (the one exception being a map by someone other than Azamael, tellingly) is the featureless black void in which they're suspended, evocative of an enveloping inner darkness....

[Roofi]

+++ Eternal Slumber Party 2

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP28: Gehirn

 

Another set-piece/spectacular map, this time designed as a massive arena in which the ultimate goal is to telefrag John Romero's head.  That this is your goal is somewhat unclear, since you begin play some 7,500 map units away from your objective (and about 256 units below it) and rapidly descend to apoint where even ZDoom's mouselook makes it impossible to crane your neck to the angle necessary to see what the spire of brain matter in the centre of the map is rising toward, to say nothing of distance and angle.  Maybe in GZDoom you can look up and see what lies at the summit?  Of course if you know it's there, are using mouselook, and have brought some rockets with you from the previous map, I suspect you probably can pump a salvo in its direction and just wait for your rockets to hit their mark, maybe lazily dodging the slow-moving clouds of incoming fireballs while you do; but that's hardly taking the map at face value, is it?

 

The intended sequence of events seems to involve a succession of platform- and switch-presses, the scale of the map often disconnecting cause from effect and leaving you to wonder what the floor-button you just walked over did - besides unleashing another Cyberdemon into the fray.  You've got a few options as to how you time your releases vs. the handling of the other monsters present (imps and mancubi on the brain-spire, a legion of spectres milling about on the arena floor, a monster-free respite to be found in the bloody pit around the base of the spire) and there's nothing to stop you turning loose the Cyberdemon squad and letting infighting happen - I think the number of monsters I actually had to shoot myself was relatively small.  Beyond a certain point, trying to keep track of incoming rockets from multiple directions is too much of a nuisance for the relatively small number of still-surviving monsters and you have to just go and get your hands dirty.

[Salt-Man Z]

I'd like to finish this one on time, because these last few maps have been really fun. This week might be a little too crazy for that to happen, though. We'll see.

 

MAP23: God Is Dead

41:15 | 100% Everything

Some clever stuff in this map; maybe a bit too clever. I was hoping for a little more city action based on that initial view, but no, it's mostly all interiors. A lot of memorable interiors, though. The first building had me stumped for a long time until I used the automap to locate the switches and lifts. Then the leap across the street felt like it was a secret; as is often the case in this WAD, it turned out to be the intended route. The red key spiral was dull, but easy enough to avoid being offensive. (Just check every corner with SSG or chaingun at the ready.) Actually, the most irritating part about it was that on my way out, I paused near the beginning to pick up some ammo, and the exit doors closed on me, so I had to run entire spiral over again.

 

MAP24: Sturm

26:41 | 99% Kills | 100% Items | 100% Secrets

I'll agree with Adam that this would have been better if there weren't that small handful of monsters to begin with. As it is, it's still pretty eerie wandering around the empty bunker looking for the way forward. You just see all that ammo and health laying around, and you just know what's coming. But how to get there...? I actually think it was a pretty clever setup: you poke around and find all the red switches, and then you get the red key, the place floods with monsters, and suddenly getting to the switches is a challenge. That said, it's not that challenging, since all the baddies start outside; if you stay inside they'll come after you, but there's enough space outside to mostly keep them occupied with infighting (lots of infighting.) Once you get the door open and teleport up to the battlements it's quite the letdown, though. An all-but-pointless corridor-crawl with predictably-placed imps and revvies. But overall the map was fun, and the view at the start was really cool. I had two cybers who didn't teleport in, hence my short kill count.

 

MAP25: Dunkelheit

26:27 | 100% Kills | 100% Items | 0% Secrets

Fantastic sense of scale here. That opening view was incredible, like you're inside the ruins of this gargantuan infernal cathedral or something. Unfortunately, the space is partitioned off into discrete areas that never really interact with each other, so it never really feels as big as it looks. It looks amazing, though. Playing on continuous was amusing, since the opening cyber was trapped harmlessly in his little turret, so I could blast him into oblivion at my leisure. Of course, from pistol start I would have had to pass him by and then come back and face him later. I did finish the teleporter maze legitimately, though it took a while. I feel like a lot of that was my fault, though; once I figured out what the puzzle was, I tried to take mental notes: three rooms, nine teleporters, how hard could it be? And it still took me way too long. It's a good puzzle, though. The ending (which, again, looked fantastic) was bizarre in how you could just fall off the walkway to end it, or walk easily all the way to the end to grab the soulsphere.

[gaspe]

MAP28: With this map we enter into the final part of ALT that will reach its climax at MAP30. The title, with MAP01 (Seele) seem to references to Evangelion to me. The setting is gorgeous, but also kinda creepy. It's a huge circular cavern where at the center, from a pentagonal pedestal over a bloody pit, a massive flesh pillar that it stands up to the ceiling until the biggest part of the brain above us is hidden into the darkness, and there's actually more of what we see in the level. And for the gameplay or stuff you have to do in the map there's not so much to say. On the "ground" level of the cave there are 5 sort of micro mazes signaled by green torches, on each one when you reach the center the walls of the maze will lower setting free a cyberdemon and the platform with the berserk will rise a little until you visit the 5 shrines so you can jump on the central pentagonal platform. Of the 100 monsters of the map 80 are specters that roam the ground and you can have some surprise since the place is very dark plus you have to be careful of the cyberdemons rockets. Though on continuous play it wouldn't be big deal I guess, anyway you can run and skip as much as you want. There's an optional BFG to pick up. Things get confusing when you start to climb the flesh pillar with a sneaky teleport placed on a stair that lead to nowhere, you are taken midway up on the flesh pillar with a mysterious switch and falling down from there you can even take by accident the teleport that will telefrag the IoS and end the level.

[Capellan]

MAP29

Again, I don't really know what I did to open the route to escape the flesh thing (which could be a representation of our own mind, perhaps?) or where the spider mama was, but this leads us back to the crash site from map02, only all washed out and spirit-world grey now. You can wander around this if you want, but there seems to be little point – just open the exit and leave.

 

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP29: Aske

 

So this map begins in the arena that comprised the previous map, now laid waste by your actions; chunks of brain matter are now strewn across the landscape, forming a new obstacle course for you to navigate.  Did you just shoot yourself in the head?  There are certainly implications along those lines present here, that if we're now traversing our own "inner world" and the preceding Gehirn (brain) is our own then it is through our own actions that his harm, this self-harm, has been inflicted.  Mashing switches and fighting off the demonic legions that emerge from the ruin of your own cerebrum, you eventually scramble your way back to the high ground, the throne of the soul, only to stumble into an immense void that gapes to suggest your own self-inflicted wound.  From there follows a jaunt into a washed-out spirit world of greys and ghosts beneath a pitch-black sky, and then a well of blood, luridly red in this grey environment - again with the wound symbolism! - which marks the level's exit.  I feel as though this level and the preceding one would have been improved as an experience had I played them back-to-back rather than on separate days.  I'm not convinced the MIDI rendition of a Quake II track does the level any favours; it fits the waves of action through which you must at times plough, yes, but once the corpses of your enemies are cooling on the floor the pounding drums and fast-paced, distorted guitar riffs don't seem an especially good match for the haunting atmosphere of the stillness and gloom that surrounds you.

[VanaheimRanger]

+++ESP 2

[gaspe]

MAP29: A direct continuation of the previous map, the layout and geometry it's almost the same but you can see the consequences of our actions in MAP28. The shrines that hosted the cyberdemons are as we left them but what has changed is that now the place is scattered with huge shreds of flesh and the brain (or perhaps our brain) is seriously damaged. This is a map that can be completed in a very short time on a pacifist mode, the 4 switches you need to press aren't so far way and if you never shoot you won't alert a swarm of cacos that will eventually teleport in the area. To complete the map you don't even need to go up at the revs, which are put in a nasty position since the upper area is a huge plain without cover. You can hear some mastermind awakening as you shoot but they'll join the battle only if you go to pick the backpack with the boxes of rocket on the platform at the top of the flesh stair at east from the start. It's a tough map to max especially on pistol start but it isn't an appealing map to go around and kill demons. There's a very deep pit, or I should say wound, on the brain where at its bottom a teleport will take to the first part of MAP02. But something isn't right as the sky is black and the whole place turned to ashes (Aske) and there's the same monochrome aesthetics of MAP09. Among all the grey it sticks out the red of few corpses and of the exit blood pit that is found at the starting point of MAP02, inside the ruin of the plane.

[riderr3]

+++ Deadly Standards, +++ Master Levels

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP26: Sudden Death

23:34 | 95% Kills | 100% Items | 66% Secrets

Wow. The green and red theme is...weird, but the sector architecture is just amazing. Puts in me mind of Sunder a little bit. Thankfully, the level doesn't play much like Sunder. It's for the most part a pretty relaxed affair. I did notice that the texturing was fine while I was moving, but as soon as I stood still, I started to get motion sick from the ever-present contrasting animations of blood and slime. I would have gone back to hunt for my last secret (the BFG), but I didn't feel like redoing the invisible walkway maze. Speaking of that room, I have to assume the imps pack along the backsides of those pyramids would have woken up if I had fired my weapon in that room? I never did, so when I finally crossed, I took peek behind the pyramids and it was suddenly imp city. Crossing the abyss would have been a lot more challenging with them all firing at me. I loved the look of the northwestern room so much I had to take a screencap of it. I was saddened that there didn't appear to be any way to cross the gap there to fight the knights, which is why I didn't max my kills.

 

 

MAP27: Vat

16:02 | 100% Kills | 100% Items | 33% Secrets

This level starts off in a well-worn theme; the twist here is that the maze isn't on the automap! On the way, you get a peek outside at a huge open volcano (very cool!) and then at the end of the maze you teleport (presumably) into the volcano for the key battle. Then it's a trip around the volcano itself, where I didn't think I'd be able to max my kills on account of a lot of the monsters outside the range of autoaim, but I managed to pull it off. Then the exit is an anticlimactic little affair with a handful of close-quarters archies. Fun map.

 

MAP28: Gehirn

13:43 | 100% Everything

Holy crap, that initial starting view! It didn't look like much at first, and then I looked down... The first thing I did was free the five cybers (mostly to deal with all the spectres) and then I had to kill all of them. (Was it necessary to release them? Did it open up the path to the exit?) Once they're dealt with, it's a little jaunt around the flesh tower/titular brain. A very cool looking level, even if combat leaves a little to be desired.

 

 

MAP29: Aske

25:35 | 100% Kills | 80% Items | 100% Secrets

Aaaand, here's the combat. Same location as last map, but actually more impressively constructed. I love all the flesh spilling everywhere. Lots of baddies, probably the most difficult is the mob of revenants. And then there's this just monstrous tomato swarm that takes forever to clean up. Gotta say I wasn't enamored of all the supplies on elevated platforms, which necessitated climbing up and dropping down over and over and over. And then you get to the final teleporter and holy cow we're back at the site of the plane crash, or what I have to assume is a memory of said site, complete with phantom monsters. What a fantastic ending.

[Capellan]

MAP30

After the early stuff which is not very interesting but also not offensive, we get to thebillion identical brain texture tunnels, which iare a really rather tedious affair. Finding the one specific place that's actually useful, without even the automap to help, is not much fun. When that's finally done you're thrown into an arena battle in a location that you may have seen in map01. The only point of this appears to be to live long enough for the exit to become available. Certainly the PE I saw isn't going to actually be a factor in this, given the impassible line between you and it, though without the invulns, all those cyber rockets might be. In any case, use the invulns to blithely ignore the enemy and run around the place until the exit teleport appears, and you can return to where it all began: the point of your own death.

 

 

ALT Overall

I will never play ALT again, but I am glad I played it. While it's definitely not my preferred style of Doom, it is an interesting and distinctive project, with some interesting and distinctive moments in it.

 

 

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP30: Afterlife

 

This level starts off in a relatively low-key fashion, with a short puzzle sequence/exploratory sequence followed by an arena battle versus a pair of Cyberdemons and a handful of arch-viles that's just got sharp enough teeth to lull you into a false sense of security; you're perhaps supposed to think "Was that it?"  The answer is a firm no, since it's only upon escaping the arena that you can get your teeth into the real meat of the level.  If the preceding two maps had you reducing your own brain to a battlefield, maybe two-tier labyrinth of fleshy tunnels surrounding an arena of blood and lava is supposed to represent some combination of the hindbrain and the very nucleus of your memories; for our hapless protagonist, is the war against Hell's legions so unending, so ubiquitous, so all-consuming of every portion of their existence and experience that it has become an autonomic process, beneath even the level of instict?  "Breathe, blink, chew, fight demons."  The text screen that follows the final arena battle and the player's subsequent "escape" to the ill-fated aircraft seen at the start of the WAD suggests that the player's doom is to remain trapped in a closed timeloop, endlessly repeating the same sequence of events and only realising the existence of the loop in its most final moments.

 

It's interesting that the arena battle itself doesn't require that you win, merely that you survive; in fact, it may be that the intent is that the odds you face are so overwhelming that you can do nothing but flee, contributing to that sense of desperation and disorientation rather than triumph.  Certainly the conclusion of the marine's ordeal is not a victory in the conventional sense of the word.  Interesting too is your emergence from the Absolute Life Transformation device that, as far as I can tell, is a strictly optional sideways jaunt on MAP01; were it a mandatory part of that first map's progression, the case could be made that it's your own interference with the device that has locked you into this repeating sequence of events, but instead it seems you're damned whether you investigated it or resolutely ignored it as something you had absolutely no business touching.

 

Final Impressions

 

Usually when (if) I make it to the end of a WAD as part of the club, I'm content to leave my thoughts on MAP30 as my final word on the subject; there aren't a lot of projects that inspire my to dig deeper than the chapter-by-chapter responses, analyses, and interpretations I've been sharing over the course of the month.  A.L.T. is different and I think it bears further scrutiny and consideration.

 

First and foremost, I think this is a WAD that is in many ways at war with itself.  If there is a core to A.L.T., a twisted heart or a morbid soul or a black thread that runs through its maps and MIDIs and intermissions to bind the whole thing together, too many of the maps not contributed by Azamael feel like they don't quite get what heart/soul/thread is supposed to be, tugging the experience in different directions; some of these maps (that I can't help but think of, quite unfairly, as "guest" maps) feel like distractions from the story that the WAD as a whole is trying to tell, others provide breaks, breathers, or intermissions from the WAD's often disorienting and even oppressive atmosphere to an extent that it can never quite get under your skin the way it wants to.  Likewise, the intermission text screens took me out of the experience in a way that wasn't wholly welcome, their prosaic tone and content dragging my flights of fancy back down to the ground and shutting down my speculation as to the implicit story and intended interpretation of certain scenes or events with "No, this is what was happening."  Honestly the references to virtual reality and a blind timeloop within those text screens tell a story that feels far less interesting to me than the hints of psychological horror that pervade the early to mid-levels and the rapid acceleration into the realm of traumatic brain injuries and self-mutilation that the last few levels of the WAD suggests; I much prefer the interpretation that we are seeing the marine's life flash before his eyes in his dying moments, either through suicide or in an aeroplane crash.

 

My experience with Russian Doom WADs and levels prior to this was limited to project direct Lainos' own 5Till L1 Complex and an abortive attempt or two to play Sacrament, so while I would contend that I wasn't entirely unprepared for the content here, it remained an experience with a very distinctive flavour that was at its best (or at the very least, its most memorable) when it committed to that, even at the expense of what might otherwise be considered the hallmarks and the component parts of satisfying Doom gameplay by conventional standards.  Whether it's the deliciously dreary urban environments that dominate the WAD's early levels, its curious dips into massively-scaled castle and Medieval settings, or the player's assault on (and escape from) their own brain at the climax of the story, A.L.T.'s best moments come when it's doing its own thing and not serving up a conventionally baroque vision of Hell or a cosy little clump of grungy rooms arranged into an anonymous industrial facility.  That's not meant as a knock on techbases in general, by the way!  I like techbases and some of the examples that A.L.T. has to offer are among the best and most distinctive within that theme.

[gaspe]

MAP30: This is very different from the usual ending maps and it hasn't an IoS fight, if this is bad or good it's up to you. To me this is one of my favourite last maps and the finale is one of the most unique and interesting that has ever been made in a Doom wad. The start is in true ALT fashion, you can have a look at the surroundings when suddenly you are dropped in a pit and the view is replaced with a starry sky, this can last a moment, like it's a flash. There you have a simple puzzle to solve but in its simplicity the place is disorienting. It looks like something from the 94' with a mishmash of different texture put together. My favourite detail here is the lift switch, was that supposed to be caricature of Doomguy? You take the teleport and other than a little trail of health bonuses you will see only darkess for few seconds until you come to the area with moving platform. One last SS trooper is guarding a BFG, I don't know if you noticed but their alert scream sounds like they are saying "ALT". There you have to wait for a long pillar to lower and there are a couple of cyberdemons to kill some time and after pushing some AVs from their pillars you can go to the next area that is big red cave that you can visit on MAP01 by entering into the Absolute Life Transformation device, but this time you are on the other side of the fences. What you have passed so far was an introduction before coming here and it's executed very well, it isn't so long to tire the player too much before the more tedious part of the map and coming here straight from the start would have ruined the surprise and the effect of recognizing the area. This part is rather boring to play actually, the place is labyrinthine with big flesh blocks filled with nooks and monsters (often lone) hidden behind every corner. The whole place is hidden on the automap and it can take a long time for a blind run to figure out what you have to do, until you find that half-hidden passage that will take you to a lower maze inhabited by PEs, whereas there were mostly revs and chaingunners before. The implication that you are inside your brain now are strong and the place somehow a has a continuity with MAP28-29 for using the same layout of a huge circular area and pentagonal patterns. When you can teleport into the lava lake the map is almost over. What you have to do is to stay alive until the teleport lowers while a big group of cyberdemons has now appeared on the cave and they keep to bombard you with rockets. When you can finally get out of there you will be taken to the Absolute Life Transformation machine as it was in the cargo area of the plane. If go inside the machine you will go back to the flesh cave, but to finish the level you have to try to go outside only to witness your own death on MAP01 starting point when all of this began.

 

 

Even with this low participation (where is everyone?? this was being voted for months and months) 2 people that never played ALT made it to the end so I can take it as a success. Even if this doesn't seem from my posts reading the first impression reminded to me how much this maps very actually confusing but at 4th replay many things aren't so surprising anymore, though I still enjoyed it.

I agree that the wad has a sort of identity crisis and there is a conflict with the parts that drive the story and those that digress from it. The first and the last part are those that had a continuous direction from Azamael, the introduction is very captivating and the narrative feel gets almost lost in the middle until the final escalation. I also wonder if Azamael wanted E3 to have more maps with the theme of Duneklheit and Sturm, or abstract as Sudden Death, and keep the techbases and cities for E1/2. I didn't mean to say that to with a dismissive tone towards the work of the other mappers, they did a great job to contribute to the mapset and it its spirit they were able to create some unique and weird adventures with their own styles. I also think Beewen deserves a lot of credit for pulling this wad as consistent as possible, some maps may be less interesting than others but all had their place and there aren't maps that look subpar.

 

[Catpho]

Yeah! Where are those people????

...Guilty as charged here. I really wish I could have participated forum-wise this month, but here we are, another missed DWMC X) 

I'm glad that I voted though, because I don't think I would have play and finish this any time soon without the club choosing it, and that would have made me miss out on this wonderful little gem. A.L.T is truly something else, a celebration of a different community's taste and sensibilities, and, couldn't have been said better by a reviewer here, also of Doom's environmental storytelling. A.L.T warps Doom's playful character and penchant for the abstract with constant abrupt shifts in tone, sometimes sending you through a gloomy, melancholic urban crawl, and other times, to psychedelic wonderlands. It's all held together in a weird way, perhaps helped by the wad being openly surreal all the way through, being close enough to a narrative and "Doom" tropes  for the levels to not feel random, but that's also where it feels uncomfortable and disorienting, and at its best, almost like a piece of psychological horror. There's also the fact that many of the authors here have the style that is quite removed from the 1993 classic we all know and love. Through that, the mapset excellently crafts an uneasy and compelling atmosphere all the way to its conclusion, with only some road bumps from the "guest" authors that were distracting, but fortunately are few and far between and, imo, ultimately didn't do the wad too much harm compared to the cool surrealness that a lot of the authors added to the set. It's an awesomely weird mapset, and it showed me how different and ambitious a Doom wad can be while still feeling like something wholly Doom-y at the end of the day.

Azamael is the obvious star here, being the project starter and all. His (they?) "core" map probably reflect the best of the wad's intention and spirit, probably the reason why they are the set's most memorable maps. Well, that and his technical skills at the engine, the grand scale he often effectively uses, his distinct and beautiful visual flair and general eccentricity that makes a project like this possible. Hats off to the big A here (nice club nickname).

The CP authors also added a lot to this set, as previously mentioned. I'm most impressed with Maddzi and Beewen. The former for the absolutely insane adventure they offered in Map11, and Beewen for the also great Map22, and for doing an incredible amount of editorial work, presumably with Lainos as well. Without these two "directors", A.L.T wouldn't be the wad we know it, and probably not as awesome. Archi also showed lots of ambition for high-concept mood/art pieces, and while I don't agree with their approach to gameplay, but they still managed to be memorable in their on right thanks to cool visual hooks. Nomad's offerings were nice as well, particularly "Sanctuary". Falcor and Warith both made great impressions in each of their mapslots. I'm not as impressed with the rest, but at least I can't single them out as bad :)

A.L.T is just an amazing journey, one that was so unique in so many ways that my text will probably not do it justice. But really, I'm tired of not being able to give my 2cs the entire month, so here it is! It's a wad that I won't forget for sure.

 

Oh, and about the music. I liked most of the tracks, especially the tranquility offered by Map15's track. I can't believe no one in the club was amused by Map06's choice though, but maybe it's just me hearing it in so many different contexts now :P

 

5 favs:

MAP02 - “Dead By the Down” by Azamael: The one that got me into the entire ordeal. One of the best atmosphere-heavy levels for sure!

 MAP04 - “Death From Above” by Azamel: It actually kinda sounds like discount Half-life now that I think about it, but the fact that the entire sequence is so bizarre and the backdrop is so gorgeous I'll give it a pass.

 MAP13 - “Knee-Deep in Waste” by Azamael: Bold and charmingly messy. Just the right kind of confusing experience.

MAP11 - “Recall” by Maddzi: Stunning map that is firing on all A.L.T cylinders! A mega package of breathtaking sights and narrative-advancing symbolism.

MAP22 - “Acidjazz” by Beewen/Lestat: Stylish and well-executed confusion.

 

[Demon of the Well]

Map 26 -- Sudden Death

I believe I forgot to mention all this time, but I've been playing ALT with the PalPlus palette (by Sigvatr), which I first did on a whim back when the WAD was new and so liked the effect that I've done it again this time. The gloomier, fever-bloom look of PalPlus certainly suits the mood of ALT....would that I'd remembered to recommend it earlier!

 

The benefits are particularly pronounced in "Sudden Death", which looks just a miiiiite tacky in standard rendering ('like X-mas' etc. etc. etc.) but has a dreamy, almost gauze-y look in PalPlus, the surreal dreamlike quality assuredly being the map's best asset. Some of the larger vistas in the map are among the most striking scenes in the game, particularly the 'Knight chasm' just west of the start point or the even large 'Candle chasm' preceding the map's (rather abrupt) exit; even the glorified hallways (which comprise much of the actual progression, if not the physical space) are done a treat by this novel aesthetic, though it's a look that is almost assuredly not sustainable for any longer than this one map. I quite like the BGM track, too, another of the set's best--fairly anonymous at first but grows on you as it settles in, with its undercurrent of lovely little string-plucks. Apart from the level's name (which is more of an allusion to the overall narrative than reflective of anything which actually happens in the level proper), I confess that whatever the symbology of this particular design is supposed to be is almost totally lost on me, though this doesn't really diminish the trip much, IMO.

 

As a play experience, well......once the aesthetic novelty wears off (which will of course happen much more quickly for some players than for others), the map is not one of the set's stronger showings, evincing once again that the action/combat side of the game is generally not one of its strong suits (or priorities, even), fielding a slightly protracted string of frontal grind which is as dry and unadorned as the map's aesthetic is unusual and surreal. The Candle chasm puzzle is the highlight, its design concept so nicely attenuated to the drowsy expanse where it takes place. As aforesaid, the level ends quite abruptly in what feels like midstream, but given its mostly unimaginative action perhaps this is the for the best.

 

Map 27 -- Vat

Perhaps moreso than any other map in the game, this guest map by Wraith is most obviously just that, an outside effort filling a hole left by the project's troubled birth, not really fitting in with the thrust of the Azamael maps surrounding it on both sides. Tellingly enough, I think the dissonance is mostly narrative, maybe even largely cosmetic (IMO the single most jarring discrepancy is that it uses a sky as normal, vs. the featureless black void used in the endgame Azamael maps); in terms of broad design strokes, it's really not so different from its compeers at all, being mostly a striking visual spectacle of a towering structure set dramatically in open space (with somewhat sparse action), just as they are.

 

On its own merits it's a decent enough outing, doing what amounts to IWAD homage in a mostly interesting way (much as m15 did), beginning with a short and fairly rote callback to Slough of Despair before plunging us into the titular (Spawning) Vat, here interpreted as a fiery cyst or cauldron sheltered in an otherworldly armored shell (to my personal interpretation of its map graphic, the Spawning Vats were a pair of strange towering housing/holding edifices, but this one's cool too!), housing a straightforward and perhaps slightly understaffed brawl for the blue key, complicated mainly by the need to wear a radsuit to avoid environmental damage. The level's design concept is most fully realized during the trek back to the slough, where we're treated to a view of the structure in the distance--that we fight in it before getting a look at it is odd/interesting, and a true example of 'playing against expectations', perhaps. The vile-nest at the end is apropos of nothing that readily comes to mind; uncharacteristically vicious for this WAD, perhaps (though not at all unwelcome IMO), though readily subdued by the BFG.

[Pirx]

5 hours ago, Catpho said:

Yeah! Where are those people????

...Guilty as charged here. I really wish I could have participated forum-wise this month, but here we are, another missed DWMC X) 

I'm glad that I voted though, because I don't think I would have play and finish this any time soon without the club choosing it, and that would have made me miss out on this wonderful little gem. A.L.T is truly something else, a celebration of a different community's taste and sensibilities, and, couldn't have been said better by a reviewer here, also of Doom's environmental storytelling. A.L.T warps Doom's playful character and penchant for the abstract with constant abrupt shifts in tone, sometimes sending you through a gloomy, melancholic urban crawl, and other times, to psychedelic wonderlands. It's all held together in a weird way, perhaps helped by the wad being openly surreal all the way through, being close enough to a narrative and "Doom" tropes  for the levels to not feel random, but that's also where it feels uncomfortable and disorienting, and at its best, almost like a piece of psychological horror. There's also the fact that many of the authors here have the style that is quite removed from the 1993 classic we all know and love. Through that, the mapset excellently crafts an uneasy and compelling atmosphere all the way to its conclusion, with only some road bumps from the "guest" authors that were distracting, but fortunately are few and far between and, imo, ultimately didn't do the wad too much harm compared to the cool surrealness that a lot of the authors added to the set. It's an awesomely weird mapset, and it showed me how different and ambitious a Doom wad can be while still feeling like something wholly Doom-y at the end of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

as one of those missing, i was busy this month, with little time for gaming or too tired to enjoy it. overwriting my comments up to map 18 or 19 with another file wasn't the greatest idea either. so here are a few bits on the first 10 maps, just in case someone asks me if i have played a.l.t.  ;)

 

and that weirdness everyone commented on was something i liked the most about this wad, it's something that really sets it apart, else it would have been a collection a random 32 maps, perhaps joined by continuing ending / starting areas in case of azamael's maps.

 

 

 

MAP01 - “Seele” by Azamael

 

why "soul" and the other german titles ? so that's the plane hijacked by nazis... weird stuff indeed, how you take damage instantly at the start, and then the screenshot catpho posted, i don't remember seeing this here. it made me curious whether this weirdness has a deeper meaning. also, where's the music from? there was no list of the tracks, and i'm sure i've heard this one before. most tracks are a really nice selection btw.

 

 

MAP02 - “Dead By the Down” by Azamael

 

excellent sector architecture with the pieces of the crashed plane scattered over the hills, and nice to look at. yes, i can see where this feeling of being alone can come from, although the combat is rather easy and dull with zombies everywhere, they sound like one of the mappers made noises into a mic.

 

 

 

MAP03 - “Dies Irae” by Azamael

 

like @spectre01 wrote, this was the map that showed me a.l.t.'s qualities. a sprawling, non-linear, warped city scape, with a sense of dread that someth?ing here is wrong. it's rather large for a map03 but could have been even larger. beautiful melancholic music and original use of textures, like the lift switches. seems inspired by those decayed industrial complexes across eastern europe.

 

 

 

MAP04 - “Death From Above” by Azamel

 

well, i've never been a fan of platforming of any kind, and i suck at it, and even less while being bombarded by a siege cow, but when you get past it it's an entertaining level.

 

 

 

MAP05 - “All Nightmare Long” by Azamael

 

apparently a train station, now filled with armed zombie workers / guards locked in their former quarters. i'm impressed how the sounds and the imagery work together. a bleak, dark building with moaning zombies, demons growling in the background, metal doors slamming shut, and a sinister soundtrack. and in this bleakness you find a room with the shining icon and books in someone's cell who looked for help in his faith. unfortunately the progression is a bit obtuse: the shootable switch is clearly visible, but needs to be hit precisely, whereas this isn't the case in doom mostly, so one could think this doesn't work and goes looking elsewhere and wasting his time... overall, the map is  a bit too large and convoluted: wherever you go, another way opens, sometimes in rather unusual ways, like the hole in the ground and crawling back up on a pipe, while the exit in a rail car came unexpected, as i only jumped inside for ammo while clearing the railyard.

 

 

 

MAP06 - “Sanctuary” by Nomad

 

the city part was entertaining, much to explore, go up and down stairs, that stuff. then you take the teleport to that hellish outdoor area where plenty of rocket boxes await being used, but you don't have a launcher, or i didn't find one. ran circles around those imps and cacos until i got bored for not finding a way and idclev'd. yeah that's for starting a wad near the end of a month  :p

 

 

 

MAP07 - “Pirates” by Nomad

 

map with too many pinkies, arachs in an annoying setup (it's hard to crawl out of that hole if they're firing at you) and, to top it off, a dock with pirate ships near a sunny island. i didn't appreciate the gameplay much, it gets more bonus points for ideas.

 

 

 

MAP08 - “Psychodelia” by Archi

 

cute corrupted base, warehouse, metallica midi, i said. until i got to that teleport game with revs in the dark. on one hand, i have to say it's an original setup, the revenant growls in pitch dark sound scary. on the other, it's rage inducing if you stumble from one teleport to the other, looking for a way out.

 

 

 

MAP09 - “Freeze” by Archi

 

this one, however, was a great atmospheric map, the monochrome world is mysterious and threatening (although not in terms of actual combat). and then, in comparison to its relative silence, the colorful (although mostly drab and brownish) real world comes with screeching of revenants and lost souls, the deep dark room near the exit is a cacophony of demonic noises with great effect, as i approached it much more careful than i actually had to.

 

 

 

MAP10 - “The Clairvoyant” by TGA

 

a rather classic "doom in the dark" map, a base with revenants, barons and other critters. a simple "find 3 keys" setup, but the fights here were better than in most of the previous maps - as others noted, the maps excel more at creativity and weirdness than at battle choreography. notably the yellow key fight where that surprise archvile has plenty of doors with health for protection, and the spider fight where the best bet seems to run past them into the teleporter. the exit was one of those unexpected things again, i mean, everyone would have looked for it at the mastermind...

 

 

[Pirx]

On 1/24/2019 at 12:06 PM, Capellan said:

 +++ Earth, Dawn of the Dead and Classic Episode

This probably won't win, but has the advantage of being exactly 28 maps (if we count secret maps) in a 28 day month :)

 

 

 

 +++ Earth, Dawn of the Dead and Classic Episode

 

sounds like a plan. it's that stupid 28 day month again, and eviternity isn't finished as i see.

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP30: Afterlife

18:37 | 92% Kills | 85% Items | 100% Secrets

Wow, that level sure was...something. Might have been my least favorite of the set. That initial bit was very cool, but then you've got that interminable blind maze. The cyber (and archie) fight wasn't very exciting. And then near the end, you're stuck in the lava with a couple invul spheres letting everyone and their grandma take potshots at you. (At that point I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but then I guess eventually the exit teleporter lowered?) Finally you find yourself back at the A.L.T. portal from MAP01, and one move and you get to watch yourself die. And what's this? a MAP30 with a tally screen? Weeeird.

 

This is a pretty great WAD altogether, though. I love seeing what the Russian community puts together, and this is another solid project, though definitely more offbeat than some of their other output.