The DWmegawad Club plays: 25 Years on Earth

[Phobus]

I've had no time today, although I think I've managed to read every comment even so. I'll have to watch some demos or videos, as I have no idea how you're all getting stuck on the wrong side of that door. I didn't think it was possible to get there without triggering the line to raise the floor, but evidently I'm wrong. The fix to stop the soft lock is indeed easy, as has been said, but I'm more concerned about the bigger break.

 

Sorry for releasing a map with such a bug in it. I was going to do some quality of life fixes based on complaints around the 30-second doors and whatnot (they won't be eliminated, but they should only trigger when you come in from below once I'm done), but evidently it needs a bit more work than that. How disappointing!

 

Hopefully you all choose to stick with the set despite the flaws unearthed so far! I'll try and catch up with the demos, videos and my own commentary in the next few days.

[eirc]

It's not a big deal to fix the secret too, you just need to move the line that opens the way after the door waaaay later. Right now it's just after you re-enter the wearhouse on the crates near the map. So people didn't make it to the door from the other side as they're supposed to, they got back out to the corridors and dropped in the gap on the other side of the door.

[Summer Deep]

MAP16

 

Well anyway, I'm resuming here from my original MAP15 playthrough, which ended in the nukage pit exit (will do MAP31 on completion of the wad, probably).

 

That near-death exit left me with 6% health, but of course there's a megasphere right in front of you at the start here. Opted not to take it, and managed to notch up 83 kills with a health level at 2%-12%, needless to say playing ridiculously conservatively. Then came across the AV, made a rapid about-turn, bolted back to the start to collect the previously mentioned artifact and fixed him with the rocket launcher. Made it to the last room without any more drama, pressed the switch, instinctively rushed out of the door and the level was over, with an IoS type sound effect. Did I miss an interesting spectacle by not staying around, or would I have sustained any damage there? Who knows?

 

The map was quite fun, pretty easy, and I haven't revisited it since completing it a few days ago. Visually quite different from what we've seen so far, pretty clearly an Icarus tribute, is it not?

[Pirx]

MAP11 - “Bloody Denial”

 

a large, wooden structure with an open sky ceiling, surrounded by brown brick walls. TOG's description as an "inverted amphitheatre" is very apt. you have to collect your weapons running around these walls before you can dive into the caves with the mancubi and revenants. because of the straferunning required to get the blue armor: i got it on the first try, after finding the switch by accident. from here one enters said open space. there's a blur sphere tucked in a corner, but simply taking cover behind the central pillar is enough. a secret berserk pack is also welcome. the final room  mirrors plutonia, map05 right? a baron and two knights block the exit while not being much of a threat, keep some rockets for them.

 

 

MAP12 - “Emerald Fluid”

 

starts as an overgrown techbase and from there one enters large underground bunkers with nukage flowing down the walls, into a pool below, and paths above. i too wish it had kept the rounded, non-orthogonal shapes everywhere. as to how i played it: mouselook-sniping with the chaingun where necessary, and i got the soulsphere by straferunning into it from the upper level, sr40 is sufficient. didn't even think that there's another way for this. some backtracking required (although in hindsight in could have jumped from the upper level to where the radsuit is, instead of running back and forth), but the map keeps throwing fresh meat at you, even if not in large amounts. nice surprise with the vile and his gang as i was returning to the outer part with the vines for the exit, however i was loaded with 25-30 rockets at this point. 

 

 

MAP13 - “Caldera”

 

heavier combat here, with predominant use of the rocket launcher after you're getting chased from the starting point (a kind of shipping facility) and into the facility's building, basically a huge cauldron, and the player climbs around on its rim where most of the action takes place. this gets a bit confusing at times. luckily there's enough rocket ammo to clear clusters of imps and later arachnotrons appearing at the bottom the cauldron and mancubi on pillars above, and this kind of play is bloodier than what we have encountered before.

 

 

MAP14 - “Water Treatment”

 

a more abstract facility, i mean, i didn't see any water, except for that puddle of sludge after the rocket launcher pickup, but judging by the sky, it seems to belong to a gigantic refinery in the distance. great sky btw. combat is a bit heated in places due to a few unruly skeletons, but the rocket launcher calms them quickly. 

now to how the map can play: i didn't know the pinkies were there, but i saw the grates and didn't trust the slime. i grabbed the launcher and the ammo with care and and went back without releasing the pinkies (gzdoom, if this makes a difference). secured the ssg from the room with the butcher block instead. returned only later to explore this slime room because it had to lead somewhere. suddenly pinkies and imps, but i bravely retreated to the room with the wooden boxes and fed them pellets from there. 

so, if the intention is to force a rocket fight with the mob, this can fail in two ways. even funnier, i had  expected a more convoluted way to find the soulsphere than pushing against a wall, and found it only after this fight.

so, flaws? oh, no, it's fun unearthing them  ;)

 

now playing through map15 and... i must have missed that secret door, anyway i've killed everything but can still hear growls out of the walls and have no idea where to  go. no wonder comic doomguy is crazy.
 
 

[Pirx]

21 hours ago, golbeeze said:

Map 31 finally gave me an Argent weapon upgrade kit via the backpack replacer, so now I have grenades! Hurray! This map was close quarters fighting all the way and I didn't actually figure out how to enter the secret exit. I noclipped. Alas...

 

Map 32 was craziness incarnate. I forget if this was my first death or not. It might have been. It was also my second death. And third. And fourth. and.....I lost count

Eventually things went smoothly and it seemed like it was so easy it should have been a first attempt. I don't know why the slaughter went so wrong so many times. The waves come at you at a decent clip, but nothing you shouldn't be able to handle. The BFG reveal after the level ends is so cruel. +1

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

ouch  ;)

 

thanks for your vids with that argent mod you're using, looks interesting

[Demon of the Well]

@Phobus After a quick runaround in -nomonsters mode, it seems the softlock in m15 stems from the gap in the floor which is created by the one-time gunswitch secret in the west/timed-shutters room. If you access that secret area, but drop down from the crates and circle back around rather than proceeding directly to platform across crates to the 'correct' side of the problem door, you can proceed past the secret area into the hall beyond, finding the section of floor next to the problem door has remained lowered, and you can drop down into the gap, thus landing on the 'wrong' side of the door. This is highly likely to occur in the current build, since the computer map and small bonus items on top of the crates naturally lead players in that direction, and a likely (necessary?) drop back to the floor, rather than towards the proper/intended entry into the next secret area.

 

Edit: props to @eirc , beat me to saying basically the same thing.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Demon of the Well

[Biodegradable]

2 hours ago, Phobus said:

Hopefully you all choose to stick with the set despite the flaws unearthed so far!

 

Perish the thought, mate. I might not have liked that particular map, but I'm still having a lot of fun!

[golbeeze]

50 minutes ago, Pirx said:

 

ouch  ;)

 

thanks for your vids with that argent mod you're using, looks interesting

I just found out there is a slightly modified version of Argent that (among other small changes) makes weapon upgrades have a small chance to replace rocket packs in addition to backpacks. Needless to say I would have loved that one change for this wad! I really like the mod though. I played through Epic with it and it was loads of fun. I want to do that again, even. 25 years is a good wad to use Argent, as it is well balanced.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP15: Spaceport

100% kills, 5/5 secrets

 

Another map that I'm left pretty torn on. There's some good bones here and a lot to like, but also a decent amount of annoyances that build up and sour the experience. FWIW I got to the end without any of the secrets, and it took me awhile to even realize I was supposed to jump in the pit... I started wondering if there was a secret floor that would pop up or something, but no, it was just the exit. Very oddly designed, even with the EXIT signs there I can't see a reason I would jump into a smallish pit that doesn't look like it goes anywhere (no big gaping drop for example) and is labelled with poison signs everywhere. The warehouse area was equal parts interesting and annoying with all the snipers everywhere. Same with the 30 second doors... I liked the first ambush, and I like the concept of re-using it for a second ambush (something I was pleasantly surprised by) but dear god having to wait for those doors to re-open every time I walked through was a killer. Maybe inside the red door there could be a newly-opened lift or stairway back down to the main area?

 

As for the secrets, once I finally found the switch (amazing how it took me awhile to remember that that texture doesn't have a big black rectangle in it) the secrets unveiled pretty easily, with the exception of getting locked in along the way like many others did. Obviously the easy fix is just making the door openable on both sides... though I think maybe it'd be interesting to make the 'trench' there only drop if you go to it from the right way, maybe in conjunction with making the door more visible and not tucked away behind a box? I dunno.

 

Aesthetically it's kinda dull, back to lots of brown and grey. The ship is kinda cool but I think mostly shrouding it in dim lighting is a disfavor.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 31 -- Holiday - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA

The night scene at the bar here, out on the beach, is very pleasant. As the name implies, I'm sure this is precisely the point. I've always had a soft spot for maps set at night, particularly if parts of them are outdoors. A warm sort of nostalgia, and again the very 90s midi (which I probably would IDMUS away from almost instantly under other circumstances!) feeds into that. Presumably we're out of Triacontathlon territory here; this is full-on Doomcute from start to finish, putting it much more in line with the opening maps from the set, and indeed it reads as something where the whole raison d'etre is precisely just to amble around and admire the lovingly made sector-beds, the sector-grill, sector-urinals, and so forth.

 

In the demo, I missed the secret exit on the initial play, but I realized pretty quickly what was up, and opted for a rocket-suicide and a flash replay so I could access it and the super-secret map legit. This is, of course, an iteration of one of Doom's most seldom-seen (and most seldom-relevant) line effects, that being a 'fuse' trigger which causes the door it's paired with to close permanently after a set amount of time, 30 seconds I think? The timer starts as soon as you move, and you've got to get into and through the kitchen, around the inside of the bar, and into the small room behind it in that time frame, before the door closes. Many players may not realize that this action even exists in the engine, so seldom is it seen (though this map's tiny and simple nature may give a better-than-average chance for someone to witness/work out what's happening for themselves, which is almost never the case where this action is used), and in that sense the secret could be read as quite mean, but once you're clued in to what's happening by one means or another actually making the run there's a snap, even from pistol-start. 30 seconds is a long time in Doom!

 

Map 32 -- The Waiting Room - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA

Hey, a real fight! I'm glad I made the effort to get here.

 

That's all this is, a straight-up fight, far more intense than anything seen in the WAD to this point, which rewards (continuous) players with a BFG, and all of us with some nice stress-relief. The fight plays out as a series of timed waves, at first cleverly gated by an array of gunswitch meat-shutters initially dividing the room into smaller segments (I guess the idea here is you bully some eldritch thing by flicking a booger into its eye, and it gets flustered and gradually loses control over these barriers it was maintaining), with some surprise teleport waves in the later stages.

 

Depending on whether and to what degree you're used to this general kind of thing, I imagine this can either seem very brutal or a stroll in the park. For the most part I think the timings of the different waves are quite well-judged for how quickly the average player will be able to clear them from pistol-start (using carryovers I imagine you probably see a lot of downtime between the first few...?), though the time between the start of the third wave (i.e. mancubus + rocket launcher chamber) and the initial opening of the outer hall did strike me as noticeably overlong, perhaps. The sense of escalation is as about as pronounced as it needs to be for a set like this, as well, I'd warrant; whoever your target audience is, I think a map like this (esp. one that's situated in slot 32) needs to try to push things "slightly too far" to make the desired memorable impression, and I think the final big wave of imps, which I myself was genuinely surprised to see, accomplishes this without elevating the map too far out of the comfort zone the mapset as a whole seems to aim to occupy. I would personally probably suggest increasing the map's rocket count (maybe replace the bullet boxes in the outer hall with rocket cases), in the name of "fun" rather than in the name of "challenge", mind you, though obviously the balance is highly functional as it currently stands, as well.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Demon of the Well

[golbeeze]

Map 16:

I really enjoyed this one. I loved the map layout, the combats, the details...throwing a grenade at an unsuspecting specter's backside... This one was a load of fun. +1 would play again

[DuckReconMajor]

MAP15, 31, and 32: Spaceport, Holiday, and The Waiting Room

prBoom+ 2.5.1.7um, skill 4, continuous with saves

 

I got a late start and want to get this out so it's all in the same entry! Yay! The video I also decided to up the resolution yet again, to glorious 720p! Which also means longer time to process so probalby blurry for a while.

 

I opened Doomworld earlier and peeped in on the thread, forgetting that today was triple-threat-secret-level day.

Since this is a continuous demo for me I knew I had to get through the secrets before tomorrows map, getting to them legitimately via their actual exits, because I'm doing a continuous demo this month.

Andromeda's post alerted me of the secret exits and that I needed to watch the pack-in demos. All 3 are a lot of fun, and today's is the 3rd demo.

(the 2nd demo we haven't gotten to, and I recognized the song immediately. do-do-do-do-DO-DO-do-do-^do)

DEMO3 showed me exactly where to go for the secret exit, and while I'm sure that's been done before it absolutely blew my mind.

 

I looked at MAP15 in SLADE's level editor before playing, like peeking beneath wrappings under the Christmas tree. This was before viewing DEMO3, I didn't want to miss anything.

Seeing the 2D representation before playing actually added to my enjoyment and experience of the level. 

I thought I'd hit the aforementioned softlock at one point, but at this time too I'd found the secret lift and I wasn't standing on it. So re-load save we go!

 

MAP31 I had my doubts it could really provide on the advertised vibe but i was wrong! song is a major bop and I certainly had a good time tonight.

 

MAP32 ("I am a patient boyyyyy")

was a great little arena battle.

At some point among the MAP32 fighting (reading other comments and the txt file it was MAP31(oh snap it was on the sexybed!)) I got the backpack!

Backpack backpack! Yeah!

 

Oh and watching back the bag is referenced in the pre-31-text intermission!

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Biodegradable]

MAP16 - Unruly Cargo

"We built this city... we built this city on blood and guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuts!" love the Starship midi haha

I thought the way you gathered the keys was a little odd, but otherwise this map was a great deal of fun, just tearing into rooms of zombiemen in a classic shoot-out style and feeling like I'm in a John Wick film gunning the bastards down. I loved it. :^D

 

I even spotted the arch-vile you hid in one of the rooms before he spotted me and got the drop on him with a couple of rockets to the face. Ha! Take that, you fucking fire-happy, broomstick-looking sonofabitch!

[Endless]

Sorry, was out of town lol. I may not fish all reviews, but I will finish the megawad, its pretty fun.

 

MAP15: Spaceport. Played in UV using LZDoom and Brutal Doom.

 

Really liked this map, the whole layout and the music kicks ass. I loved the frantic and non-stop style that it has, with monsters in every corner and various ambush spots, with one big room full of boxes and monsters, working a as a whole road to the next key, I liked that part, buuut, the rest of the map kinda got messy. Maybe I'm dumb or something, but I got stuck several times in the Mancubus room, with the two doors blocking my way and I had no idea what the hell to do, so I had to resort to noclip, twice. After that, the blue key was fucking impossible for me to find, but again, maybe I'm dumb, also, I'm starting to notice a trend here, why is the blue key such a pain in the ass to get ? I truly enjoy the whole layout, the monster placement and the fun MIDI music, but it does get a lil bit ''lost'' from time to time, yet nothing truly impossible, just annoying.

Also, can I post in spanish ? Nunca he visto comentarios en español por aquí y creo que sería bastante interesante poder ver al resto de la comunidad hispano hablante o española.

[Capellan]

MAP16

This put me in mind of an early Demonfear map.  Much larger than those tended to be, of course, but other aspects were similar.  The many many doors, for instance!  Also the tempo of the gameplay, with lots of monsters activating and coming to find you early on, but once you'd dealt with that the gameplay's mostly just rolling up scattered pockets of resistance and looking for three keys where all the first two do is let you get the next one (the yellow key in this map is entirely superfluous, really - you could ditch it from the progression and put the red key where it currently is and it would only mean the player could skip one near-empty room).

 

It was kind of fun in a 90s way though :)

[ironicmoustache]

Crispy, UV, continuous.

 

MAP16

I, for one, really, really, really disliked the choice of MIDI here. I don't think it fits the map at all, and was a bad reminder of the bad impression MAP01's music made on me. And that was with me actually liking "Boys Are Back in Town". No such love for Starship, unfortunately, so it was a bit of a sour point. I won't say something like it ruined the map for me, but honestly, it came unreasonably close to it. I am a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to music though, so yeah. I mean, it comes with being a record store employee. (and probably what got me the job :p)

 

Music grievances aside, it’s a decent romp through a tight base with some high-quality Doomcutery to appreciate. The opening hallway fight with the hitscanners—and the odd caco or two—flooding in from the side rooms is a properly enjoyable fight. Glad I held off on picking the megasphere up until most of the opposition here was cleaned up. I liked the layout here, felt like something approaching a real place. The rest of the level, combat-wise, is pretty standard, nothing spectacular but also nothing particularly wrong about it. The AV in the bedrooms added a bit of spice to things but there was ample cover to avoid the blasts.

 

Bad first impression with the music, then a fun impression with the first extended combat encounter, then pretty ok after that. Not one of my favourites, but not a bad map at all. It does have a whiff of the 90s, as Capellan points out above, which is appreciated.

Edited June 16, 2020 by ironicmoustache

[gaspe]

MAP16: Into the spaceship :3 Lots of cute details and I found here a good attention to realism, especially the ceilings made with many steps to give the impression of a slope. I think that Capellan described well the gameplay, at first is really fun because after the monsters are alerted they keep opening doors and spread in various directions to hunt you but once you deal with the initial chaos the opposition runs down and you have left to clear the remaining rooms while you explore the rest of the ship. Looks like the way we exit gives a hint of what will happen...

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP31: Holiday

 

Cute and fun, providing the player with two long-delayed pieces of kit, the plasma gun and the backpack; the former I haven't really missed, I haven't found myself thinking "I wish I had a plasma gun for this!" in response to specific encounters, but the latter is an absolute boon, the two shotguns and the chaingun just chew their way through ammunition really quickly when you've only got the standard magazine size to work with and the delayed appearance of the backpack has been one of the signature experiences of this WAD so far.  Other than that, it's a largely flat map with its share of charming little details and a well-chosen, upbeat MIDI to match the generally breezy tempo of the combat.

 

Didn't get the super secret exit, which is fine, really, chasing down door-closes-after-thirty-seconds sectors is kind of the opposite of how I tend to play and I don't know that this particular example represents an especially arduous or tricky application of that mechanic provided you know what you're going for right from the start of the map.  So instead I proceed to...

 

MAP16: Unruly Cargo

 

I found this one reminiscent of last month's Mars War or maps of a similar vintage, albeit perhaps more intricately crafted in its representational detail.  Here we explore the interior of the spaceship seen outside of MAP15's vast window; there isn't a lot of wasted space here, with thin partitions dividing functional spaces and stepped ceilings representing in places the curved or sloped hull of the craft.  The opposition once again consists mostly of low-tier threats in large numbers, but this time they're mostly free-range and free-roaming, wandering through the ship's corridors and in and out of its rooms, opening distant doors and allowing sound to propagate to wake up even more of their reanimated brethren.  Interesting too is the provision of a megasphere at the start of the map to top up the player's health, outside of which there are scattered healing potions but not a lot else in the way of health to be found - a trio of medikits in the sick bay, another one in the captain's quarters, the usual two-pack in the exit room, but there's definitely a sense of topping up early only to be steadily whittled down by hitscan attacks, with no significant recovery from your inevitable injuries outside of carefully defined moments.

[Deadwing]

MAP 16

 

This is a really cute map, and is also different from the previous entries. Still, it adds a good sense of context, since you are in the spaceship we've found in the previous map :D The map itself is quite short and easy, where you basically enter the rooms and kills everything there, find the keys to progress and reach the exit. The exit is really curious, though, because felt like the demons were transporting an Icon of Sin in the spaceship. I'm glad we were able to stop them!

 

Map preference:

 

11, 14, 3, 13, 6, 12, 8, 16, 5, 15, 9, 10, 2, 4, 1, 7

[loveless]

On 6/14/2020 at 9:22 PM, Capellan said:

MAP15

Mostly fun action, but completely ruined for me by the single time secret (which IMO always suck donkey's balls) and those annoying fucking "close for 30 seconds" doors.

 

 

 

i'm generally cool with that but if you're referring to the room then yea, i get you.   

 

figured out the shoot switch, did the thing, then realized that activating it meant missing it in a permanent way without recourse.

[Phobus]

Until such a time as I haven't, I'm up-to-date with videos and am only about 6 demos off of being caught up there, too, so I'll just respond to those and various posts here before going away for a bit and trying to catch up further!

 

@Pirx I'm glad the platforming on MAP06 didn't clash with your preferences! I think straferunning is indeed necessary to get onto the truck from the piping via the lamp post - hopefully that's a common enough technique!

 

@loveless I see you used SR50 when faced with mandatory nukage navigation (as did Demon of the Well) and skipped the line triggering the bars. I think I'll try and do something about that, but I can't use redundancy as it'll risk making people think the bars can never be passed... As for MAP15, I've got a fairly sizeable set of minor changes planned, so hopefully those quality of life fixes will improve people's view of it. Arch-Viles after collecting the BFG on MAP32? That would be so cruel! Especially as the door currently closes 6 seconds after opening and can be missed entirely if you're not done fighting (or aren't paying attention) after 5 minutes. I'm tempted to see if I can find a way to make that door open and stay open with some trickery.

 

@golbeeze I think it's fair play for you to give yourself a backpack when the map set doesn't give you many and the mod you're working with takes most of the away. Looks like your cautious play with this mod doesn't hold up too well to proper chaos! Fortunately for you, there's not too much more of that left, and you're very well-equipped to deal with it.

 

@Demon of the Well I've seen your MAP13 demo and you're right, a mancubus does seem to come in before the others. I've taken a note to check that all four of those monster closets are set up the same. It could be that one is open when the others aren't, hence the early arrival. A minor correction to your commentary in the thread: the door that waits 30 seconds to close on MAP31 is a sector action and will trigger whether you move or not - you are right that it's there because I was using it up in a secret map for a super secret map. I'm tempted to have that door reopen on map ending so people aren't regularly committing suicide or restarting the map when they realise what's up...

 

Also, I'm not sure if swapping bullets for rockets in that outer area will speed things up too much in MAP32. If the player isn't bogged down by the "impocalypse", they're likely to have a lot more time on their hands before the 5-minute door opens. Saying that, I've seen a lot of people take the early exit and miss out anyway, so perhaps the additional firepower will encourage them to stick around...

 

@eirc It looks suspiciously to me that, on MAP15 with GZDoom on your first video, the Mancubi fireballs scorched the wall around the secret shoot switch enough to hide it entirely, so I'm not surprised you missed it! On your second video I was happy to see you get the intended experience - locked in the room for 30 seconds, you took a moment to look around and noticed something amiss! It's amazing how many players seemed to immediately become infuriated at the idea they were locked in a room and just ran out hitting/sawing at the walls blindly until the doors opened. The MAP13 secret was a simple bit of platforming by the lift north of the main room, although you may have already picked that up from other people's commentary!

 

Thanks to both you and Demon of the Well for the insight into the MAP15 softlock, that's helped me a lot with formulating an idea for fixing it at the end of the month!

 

@Summer Deep I think those explosions can damage you, but I tried to mitigate that by lining it up with a wall you can't get too near. Just some pyrotechnics you've seen before, anyway!

 

@Magnusblitz That's not a bad idea, with the lift to avoid having to retake the lock-in room. However, if a player hasn't found the secret in the lock-in room and can avoid going back, I think it'll only prolong the not-finding of that initial, all-important secret for most players.

 

@Endless I think Spanish on this forum would be fine if you were talking specifically to another Spanish speaker. Most of us (like me) would probably need to rely on an online translation tool to understand what you're saying, though.

 

@ironicmoustache You may be glad to hear that the tongue-in-cheek music choices are mostly exhausted, now. MAP27 will be the remaining big offender (and a map that'll probably upset a lot of people anyway, I suspect), but otherwise it's mostly faster-paced metal of varying vintages and gloomy rock from here on out.

 

 

I'll be back later with any other demo comments for loveless and Demon of the Well once I've finished catching up with those, and commentary for MAP14, excuses and apologies for MAP15 and a little backstory for MAP31 and 32.

 

[eirc]

18 minutes ago, Phobus said:

On your second video I was happy to see you get the intended experience

 

Weeeell, the second run was after went into slade and knew where all the secrets were and how the room worked. It took me a while to open it since I was originally planning to first clean the map of monsters and then go through all the secrets but I said fuck it due to the 30sec downtime. My blind experience was to blindly saw and hump all the walls like everyone else :P

 

EDIT: The problem is people don't know there's a timer on the door and that leads to the frustrated humpings :D If there was a way to telegraph that the issue would be much less pronounced. I'm thinking it would be possible to have like a synced platform that lowers and raises that could act like a "progressbar" of sorts but maybe that'd be too convoluted or too easy to bug out.

Edited June 16, 2020 by eirc

[Phobus]

@eirc Well, colour me disappointed :P

You are right that a lot of players wouldn't be used to the 30-second door line action and therefore wouldn't know to wait, but what you're suggesting would involve some kind of scripting. Nearest thing I can think of would be closing an additional wall somewhere that has some sort of "Please Wait" indication on it... Which is in line with some ideas I've had about MAP31 and MAP32 also using archaic specials that a lot of new players won't be used to and old players wouldn't expect to see again.

@loveless I've caught up with your demos and seen some frustrated head shaking going on! I've got a plan to alter that one-time nature of the secret in "that room" so that you can miss the platform raising and still get up there, along with quality of life changes. I'll list my updated change/fix plan below, actually!

 

@Demon of the Well Likewise, I'm up to speed with your demos now. The visual demonstration of getting stuck on MAP15 was helpful! I was quite surprised at how you and loveless have quite similar FDAs for my maps, watching them back-to-back. I'm interested in seeing how you both get on in the later maps (and MAP17, which has an early fight that's rather mean-spirited).

 

Here's my current fix plan:

MAP01: Barriers, to stop people complaining about the invisible walls. Not sure what to put in, yet, but I'll think of something!

MAP04: Rephrase sentence in _MAPS text file so as to not make people think half of this map is from a different part of the WAD.

MAP07: Maybe signpost the chainsaw secret a bit more so people who don't look at the automap are in with a better chance of finding it.

MAP08: 
A) Ammo on pistol starts seems low for some players.
B) Hell Knight reliably gets stuck on edge of lift after warping in.
C) Make sure progression cannot be broken on last door of the corridor-of-doors by having the line trigger used up... Somehow...

MAP11:
A) Lower/enlarge (downwards) the shoot switch for the secret soulsphere.
B) Adjust switch for secret blue armour to be closer to the bars (a bit).
C) Make berserk secret more obvious somehow (candle?)

MAP13:
A) One-time teleporters can and do break in cl2 - make them repeatable and make other alterations to the level to make things fool-proof.
B) We seem to have an early-bird Mancubus on the western pillar - look into it.

MAP14:
A) A couple of ceiling lights in the outer corridor don't have the correct flat.
B) Anything I can do to make the trigger line for the closing door a bit harder to skip for those SR50 users?

MAP15:
A) Make raising platform for first switch in the secret chain also a lift.
B) Make the exit door of the lock-in room, on the way to the red key door, NOT trigger the 30-second lock-in, for fuck's sake.
C) Make lock-in doors openable from the outside.
D) Make the exit pit more obviously an exit pit (maybe hide that it's a damage exit...)
E) Adjust weirdly blind exit Arachnotron.
F) Fix the soft-lock caused by getting into the secret trench from above, rather than the intended route.
G) For safety's sake, have that door be openable from within as well.

MAP31: Maybe open the door to the "SPA" switch near the exit, for players who've missed the 30-second trigger. Possibly make the SPA more obviously an exit, too. Failing that, a custom texture to let the player know they've only got 30 seconds to pull the switch might be an idea...

MAP32: More rockets and less bullets in the outer area, maybe, and perhaps a 5-minute indicator texture ("Back in 5!") for the Duty-Free section... And/or a way to keep the door open once it's open

MAP26: Make one-time secret also activate from elsewhere in a repeatable fashion (clocking this one in advance...)

 

MAP14: Water Treatment

Apparently this was a 4-hour speed map that probably ended up taking nearer 5, particularly after I'd adjusted it for this set. I originally had named this "Blank Space", as it just seemed to occupy a void in my memory and was just about generic enough that no name sprung to mind, but decided on something more generic for this particular set. Some pop song was probably getting a lot of coverage at the time, too...

 

The main changes for adaptation here were the soulsphere, which used to be a plasma rifle, and the Arch-Viles and Revenants in the exit (on UV), which used to be a Cyberdemon you either tried to sneak round by going up high, or took on in close quarters. However, the plasma rifle isn't officially introduced until later in the set (and won't appear in secrets until MAP31, as you mostly have seen by now) and the Cyberdemon doesn't want to be here until you at least might have a plasma rifle... So I removed all of the plasma ammo as well, and here we are. Otherwise this one stayed largely the same. I may have added the light flats on the ceiling in the warp-in corridor (missing a couple, clearly...), and I definitely staggered the enemy releases a bit so that they no longer cluster around the blue key part so badly.

 

As for my playing experience... I died :( I took on the Revenant/Zombieman room with the chaingun, coming round from up high and took a load of unnecessary rockets. Then a bit later my talent remained absent and I just sort of died. So I loaded up my save at the start of the map, came back with a vengeance (and used my carried over rockets on the aforementioned SSG room) and still finished the map having lost any benefit from the soulsphere and reduced to green armour. I guess I'm having an off day!

 

As a final note, I think the outro to this MIDI is like it is because it's faithfully reproducing the song. Shame that it sounds crap in MIDI form, at least, IMO. I'm surprised nobody brought it up! 

Edited June 16, 2020 by Phobus

[Alper002]

Everyone has said enough on the softlock in MAP15:Spaceport, but the rest of the map is pretty good! The spaceship and warehouse lent the map a sense of place and scale that I quite enjoyed. Me entering the crate maze with low health made it slightly obnoxious to go through, but it was still fun. Besides the aforementioned softlock, I liked the chain of secrets required to find the secret exit. It teases one of the switches you'll need to press, making me wonder how you get there, and then it's so satisfying when you finally DO get there! First trip through the lockdown room I didn't exactly notice the start of the secret chain, but since I didn't find how to progress to the crate maze(somehow) I went to it multiple times and then finally found the secret. And then I noclipped up the platform because I didn't notice the markings on the floor and was NOT going to replay the map or reload a save for another shot.

 

I loved MAP31:Holiday's initial impression. It was charming in the kind of location it was trying to be with all the doomcute lying around. A silly music choice helps it too. A great place to take a vacation on, for sure!

The way the secret door was something I had to find out via map editor(Thank god people can just check maps in the editor), but I think a simple and silly way of hinting at what's going on with the door would be to put text on it that says "Too late!" or something along those lines when it's closed. It won't be apparent until it's too late, but at least it'll be clear.

 

Boy, MAP32:Waiting Room was tough. Once the exit revealed itself and the imps started teleporting in, I was ready to just zoom off into MAP16! Definitely more challenging than anything else in the wad so far. While the spicy gameplay was a little above me, it was still a lot of fun and my favorite part. I also enjoyed the way the map reveals itself overtime as if it was a map for an invasion gamemode of some sort.

 

MAP16:Unruly Cargo was fun with its initial encounter, having monsters open doors is something I really like seeing! Beyond that there's places to find which always seem to serve a necessary purpose on a ship like the one the map seemingly takes place in. I'm guessing that because otherwise the transition from this map to the next would be incredibly strange. Speaking of the exit, I like the cute usage of the Icon of Sin's explosive death sound.

 

Spoiler

Maps get rated on different lists (which I'll add as I deem necessary) depending on which part of the map I liked most, and the placement on said list is dependent on what I think of the map as a whole.

Maps I liked for their simplicity:
MAP08:Constriction
MAP01:Drop Pod Excursion
MAP07:Rat Run

 

Maps I liked for their aesthetics(visuals & music combined):
MAP13:Caldera
MAP02:Bunker Buster

 

Maps I liked for their sense of place:
MAP31:Holiday
MAP15:Spaceport
MAP16:Unruly Cargo
MAP03:Urban Renewal

 

Maps I liked for their creativity:
MAP06:Destination Defenestration
MAP04:Wasted Luxury

 

Maps I liked for their gameplay:
MAP11:Bloody Denial
MAP32:Waiting Room
MAP05:Skyline
MAP14:Water Treatment
MAP12:Emerald Fluid
MAP10:Haste Keep
MAP09:Skulking Death

 

^{I need a proper approach to writing these posts, I was considering giving up multiple times...}

Edit:Oh, I missed Phobus posting about some of what I brought up while writing this... whatever

[Phobus]

MAP15: Spaceport

Well, fuck... I've just a look in the editor after rather easily reproducing the softlock and I've seen I never actually put in something that raises that floor back up when you're approaching from above... Which is madness, as I know for a fact I was messing around with exactly that for quite a while in development. I must have forgotten to finalise that at some point, as I know I had several abortive attempts at lowering the ceiling as well as the floor when the player was coming in via the crates, and raising it all again when they weren't.

 

Oh well, my failure is written large over this thread and I've got the plans in place to deal with it. I like the map itself, as it does everything I think a map with a secret exit should do - weaves the secret path through the level, with at least one difficult-to-spot bit. I thought I was being clever, locking the player in the room with the first secret in the chain. "They'll find it then!" I thought, gleefully. Of course, I also made it a one-time secret, which I regret and plan to fix (it's a bit inappropriate for the difficulty of the map set to have the player go through a map this large again just because they didn't "read" the floor whilst shooting at a hidden switch). Still, I used up a tricky linedef type doing something I thought made sense and implemented another unusual linedef type in a novel way.

 

"Tricky linedef types", of course, leads me to the lifts. These are purely to use up these repeatable floor raise/lower types without resorting to platforming puzzles like the earlier maps did. I thought they were intuitive enough, but it is awkward to have to wait until the floor has fully lowered before being able to step on to raise it, and Doom players are rather an impatient bunch!

 

I'm really happy with the warehouse. It's got plenty of optional pickups, makes use of a customised texture that was originally made for this map (those stepped 128-long crates) and has difficulty settings implemented so that the most stressful bit (the endless hail of fireballs from above) is much reduced. I agree with @gaspe that it's not really a crate maze, as there's a pretty clear path to follow from the big doorway to the stairs, with just three small dead ends and a couple of splits caused by my artistic scattering of crates.

 

This was the 13th map made, I believe, after maps 30 down to 20 and MAP16. The spaceship parked outside doesn't exactly match the dimensions of MAP16, but it's a similar shape, and also is quite close to the shadow that grows outside MAP32 as time progresses! I was originally doing spaceship designs similar to this one for DBP06: Vicarious Reality... But I bogged down on that map and ended up deleting it. The textures there were really good for it, but I figured I could recreate the effect with stock textures closely enough.

 

My playing experience, aside from hunting out the softlock, was marred by another death - this time caused by taking too much damage in the warehouse. Upon reloading a save from just before opening the door, I decided to rush the invisibility sphere, which I've never done before. It actually worked quite well, until the Revenant and Hell Knight both launched attacks that I dodged into and left me scrambling for cover and health amongst the chaos. After that the rest of the map was pretty easy. I did the secret chain before opening the red door, but after getting the red key, which was enough to trigger the enemies in the second-wave of the lock-in room. I was surprised to see the imps and zombies crowding out to meet me halfway across the lobby when I came back with the blue key!

 

Unlike a lot of the other maps in this set, this map wasn't made with any particular music in mind (I just allocated it a song I liked), which is why even a quick player will hear the MIDI play through about three times when going for the secret exit. Having seen hours of people playing this map, I'll be happy to not hear the MIDI again for a while :P

 

Once again, I apologise for this map being broken. Now I've seen the actual source of the issue, I'm rather embarrassed.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Phobus

[DuckReconMajor]

MAP16:Unruly Cargo

prBoom+ 2.5.1.7um, skill 4, continuous with saves

 

Very grateful to get that megasphere at the beginning. Great equalizer after secret/non-secret/continuous respective paths.

Even after reading the text file and knowing the name of the map somehow I still didn't put it together this was the ship lol.

Once the automap took shape I was like awww yeah this is really cool.

 

I got a good laugh out of the cubicle bed area. zombie-zombie-zombie-ARCHVILE!

 

At the end I thought it was a death exit. I was like NO! i just got the backpack! But it turned out I could reload and avoid what turned out to be Romero's head exploding.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Snikle]

MAP16: Unruly Cargo

Now we’re on the starship we saw in map 15. The goal, I guess, is to blow up the engines. I played most of this map the day before writing this, the only parts I did now were after the blue door, so bear with me as I try to remember the rest. I know there was another AV near the yellow (IIRC) key, which threw me for a loop. This WAD is very light on Archies. I love how most of the ship is populated by fodder, meaning my chaingun got some really fun use. Trying to make a challenging late-game level but still using zombiemen is an interesting challenge that I wish I saw more of. The hallways on ship were kind of same-y and cramped, but luckily there was never too much focus on them. Their presence did make the level feel pretty ‘90s, while obviously looking better than any hallways from that era. Another Hall-related thing I noticed is that the layout of the level fits neatly into the shape of the ship. Sure, the ship is symmetrical, but Phobus succeeded, I think, in making each room feel unique from the others.

[Phobus]

MAP31: Holiday

So I've avoided jumping in the "obviously damaging exit pit" and not seen the "W1 Light Set to 0" line action do it's thing, but I'm now in a world of sector furniture!

 

The opening beach/bar scene was inspired by Club Paradise, in the Philippines. It's not an exact replica or anything silly like that, but I'd like to think it captures roughly the right vibe of that place at night. The rest of the map was more generally inspired along that theme, with an indoor pool, poolside bar, public toilets, pool tables and some apartments. You grab your backpack - the first of the set (and last until MAP23, I've been told, so if you missed this level or are pistol starting, you know where you stand!) - and can then leave. Like I said "Don't forget to grab your bag [before going]!" - Fun Fact for you, there's a berserk down on the beach. I've seen some players find it. It's a bit of an "unmarked" secret, as it's not very obvious, but not overly hidden.

 

The map is light-hearted fun, but I spent a fair bit of time on all the sector furniture and whatnot. Fortunately I'd already made MAP16, so had a head start on the tables and chairs. The music was picked both to fit the theme and to give us something upbeat for the cast/credits screen after you've beaten MAP30. ZDoom players who've found the secret exit get treated to an early showing of BOSSBACK, where my crappy image editing skills are at work!

 

Continuous players have a lot to celebrate here, with the plasma rifle and backpack ready to get (although it would be easy to miss one or the other if you're laser focused on one route). Pistol starters at least shouldn't mind restarting to rush the "SPA" switch. Speaking of which, I quite like @Alper002's suggestion, as it's a bit more elegant than the sign about limited-time offers on the spa or whatever that I had in mind.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Phobus

[Andromeda]

MAP32: The Waiting Room (25 Years on Earth)

PrBoom+ 2.5.1.4, HNTR-PS, no saves, 100% everything

 

Apt title. The concept is simple, but the execution is great. Monsters are deployed in increasingly larger and more difficult waves, but you're also provided with sufficient weaponry to quell the threat efficiently. The prominently displayed BFG9000 is meant to be a reward for your patience - you won't get it until after you've cleared all the monsters, as it would completely trivialize this level otherwise as has been said. Not much more to say, it's a concept level and these can be hit or miss for me. In this case, it's certainly a hit as I had a lot of fun!

 

Levels in order of preference:

Spoiler

MAP32: The Waiting Room

MAP09: Skulking Death

MAP06: Destination Defenestration

MAP14: Water Treatment

MAP08: Constriction

MAP13: Caldera

MAP12: Emerald Fluid

MAP11: Bloody Denial

MAP04: Wasted Luxury

MAP07: Rat Run

MAP05: Skyline

MAP31: Holiday

MAP02: Bunker Buster

MAP15: Spaceport

MAP01: Drop Pod Excursion

MAP03: Urban Renewal

MAP10: Haste Keep

 

MAP16: Unruly Cargo (25 Years on Earth)

PrBoom+ 2.5.1.4, HNTR-PS, no saves, 100% everything

 

Here we have a fairly realistic spaceship depiction both in-game and in the automap (I assume we're inside the one seen on MAP15?). I like the fact that the first shot you fire is bound to wake up more than half of the enemies present. The arch-vile guarding the yellow key also surprised me, but I managed to evade it before the demons boxed me in. With the super shotgun in hand, it's a matter of clearing the rooms one by one and blow up the engines at the end. Ultimately it's not really my cup of tea but an interesting effort nonetheless.

 

Levels in order of preference:

Spoiler

MAP32: The Waiting Room

MAP09: Skulking Death

MAP06: Destination Defenestration

MAP14: Water Treatment

MAP08: Constriction

MAP13: Caldera

MAP12: Emerald Fluid

MAP11: Bloody Denial

MAP04: Wasted Luxury

MAP07: Rat Run

MAP05: Skyline

MAP31: Holiday

MAP02: Bunker Buster

MAP15: Spaceport

MAP01: Drop Pod Excursion

MAP03: Urban Renewal

MAP10: Haste Keep

MAP16: Unruly Cargo

[Phobus]

MAP32: The Waiting Room

Yes, I picked this MIDI because of the title of the song it's based on. I'd never actually heard the song before. In fact, I'm only just listening to it (the song, not the MIDI) for the first time whilst I type out this message. Apparently a Killing Joke cover, so there's something I never knew!

 

I had a minor issue near the end of a map, where a column of 20 imps managed to not teleport long enough to all crowd over and block the teleport the lines in the impocalypse. Still, nothing noclipping out to make them space out couldn't fix! I died near the end of my first attempt at this map, for no really good reason. Just ran out of skill, I suppose! Anyway, I reloaded my save and decided to use no plasma, which went well. Now I'm carrying a BFG, plasma rifle and 440 cells into the next few maps... Which I won't need on MAP16, but fully intend to abuse on 17 and 18, as they're a bit harder than a lot of what we've seen to this point.

 

This map took a while to make thanks entirely to testing. My intuition for how long it takes to kill things with a given armoury is pretty good (probably thanks to the 25 years or so of playing the game...), so making the map last most of 5 minutes from a pistol start wasn't difficult. The timing on the rising doors took many attempts to get right, though, as did the growing shadow of the arriving spaceship outside the window on the big runway. As @Demon of the Well noticed, you do get a bit of a breather if you're quick to kill the Mancubus and Rocket Launcher room, which was deliberate as you don't really get much time to breathe before then or after.

 

As has been mentioned before, if you wait long enough, the BFG door opens and you get your reward. Unless you're a pistol-starter, then your reward is just 100% secrets on the intermission screen.

 

 

All caught up! I'll do MAP16 tomorrow, whilst you're all cussing me out for the first fight in MAP17. @Andromeda - I'm surprised I left the AV on HNTR in MAP16! I guess my difficulty adjustments must have been around the number of fodder, instead...