The DWmegawad Club plays: 25 Years on Earth

[DuckReconMajor]

MAP12 - Emerald Fluid

prBoom+ 2.5.1.7um, skill 4, continuous with saves

 

I enjoyed this one, even more so than the first half of yesterday's map. 

Having Mars War fresh on the brain, the look of the map reminded me somewhat of that wad, today's map i think less modern looking than yesterday's.

The big rooms and slime pits ironicmoustache mentioned I think is a big part of that.

This is a kind of map I'd normally get lost in pretty badly, but I actually didn't.

 

The drumless midi I thought was interesting. In your mind waiting for the rest of the band to come in actually added a suspenseful feeling in the map. I could go either way on whether this gets 'fixed' or not.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP12: Emerald Fluid

 

This one is classic Doom, a big chunky techbase full of elevated walkways and pits of toxic slime, and if there's anything disappointing about the map, it's the way that the off-kilter start area, with its uneven walls and peculiarly rotated raised sections, quickly gives way to much more conventional architecture built out of neatly aligned squares and octagons.  Other than that, this is a lot of fun, as you gradually climb from one level within the overall structure to the next, extra servings of fresh meat helping to keep the back-and-forth engaging.  The compact nature of the map and some exaggerated telegraphing (such as the visible bars and extra-loud door-opening sound triggered by the switch in the south-west room) mean that it's mostly obvious what each switch does, and it doesn't take too long to figure it out even if it's not immediately apparent; there's only so many places to go and so many different moving parts to revisit, after all.

[Andromeda]

MAP12: Emerald Fluid (25 Years on Earth)

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

 

The start keeps the difficulty of the previous level, as you're under fire from all directions and it's difficult to move around due to the nukage and the demons/spectres roaming. Afterwards the action quietens as we're treated to a gorgeous large room with an impressively sized nukage pit. Perhaps this level's most distinguishing feature is its "tiered" layout, with progress being made as we venture through increasingly higher walkways over nukage that are populated by increasingly tougher monsters.

 

Fortunately we're given a rocket launcher and a healthy amount of rockets to dispose of the beefier enemies quickly and (assuming you don't blow yourself up) painlessly, I enjoyed the RL/SSG synergy that this level calls for. Other than the easy to find radiation shielding suit, the secrets were quite tricky to get though I liked how you can get the supercharge in two different ways. The progression was slightly unintuitive at times, but since the level's reasonably sized it doesn't take long to figure out the way forward. I was a bit disappointed that the last switch didn't raise a bridge to the other side of the first indoors area, but not a big issue. Solid level!

 

Levels in order of preference:

Spoiler

MAP09: Skulking Death

MAP06: Destination Defenestration

MAP08: Constriction

MAP12: Emerald Fluid

MAP11: Bloody Denial

MAP04: Wasted Luxury

MAP07: Rat Run

MAP05: Skyline

MAP02: Bunker Buster

MAP01: Drop Pod Excursion

MAP03: Urban Renewal

MAP10: Haste Keep

[Pechudin]

A bit behind.

 

MAP08: Skulking Death (Kills: 44/50, Secrets: 1/2, Deaths: 0)

    Had a bit less trouble with this map compared to the first time I played it. The Archvile came down immediately, so I lured him to where he would not ressurect Revenants. No idea where the last 6 enemies are, probably in the second secret. The opening Soulsphere was a bit too easy to obtain.

[Snikle]

MAP12: Emerald Fluid

New theme here, which is nukage. And verticality. Also passages above nukage. I wonder which IWAD map this is inspired by. This one involved some backtracking and switches whose uses were not immediately intuitive, so I spent some more time here than I otherwise would have. The layout was interesting though and the theme, while certainly not unique, was very well done. There was also a lot of play with the light levels, especially in the large reservoir room. The start/exit area being more naturalistic in contrast to the large and blocky construct of the rest of the map was nice, I always like maps that incorporate both natural and artificial areas.

[Summer Deep]

MAP12

 

As predicted a couple of maps ago, 'damaging floors' seem now to be making their presence felt, but although there's a lot of the stuff here, you don't need to engage with it very much. Not a lot to say really, I never quite worked out what any of the switches did, but progression wasn't difficult. Played through it a handful of times, the only mishap being when an attempt to fire a rocket at the Arachnotron was blocked by a pink demon, with the predictable result. Got the Soulsphere, which gave some added insurance against that nasty sting in the tail with the AV and Revenants patrolling the exit area.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP10: Haste Keep

100% kills, 1/1 secret

 

I'm tempted to agree that this one was a bit too short to make much of an impact, but I did appreciate the relatively straight-forward nature of it. Maybe a bit too easy, especially on continuous - I came in at 200/200 and left at ~150/150, and almost all of that was taking a rev rocket on the last fight. The outside ambush could feel tight, but the ambush was sign-posted and there was enough room to use the RL and just slam into everything funneling at me through the limited approach. The rev/AV ambush at the end was decent though, I liked how the Vile could go into the exit cage and harass the player if the player retreated to the start (though the only enemies in the cage are pistol zombies so nothing too threatening in terms of resurrections). The green and white rock helps break up the dull grey and brown theme carried over from last map.

 

MAP11: Bloody Denial

100% kills, 3/3 secrets

 

I like the layout of this one a lot, with progression around the main central arena until you reach the stairs up to it, but with each side area having its own character and avoiding dreaded symmetry. Texturing and detail is nice too, even just simple stuff like having the horizontal iron beam in the chaingun inset goes a long way. The two secrets stand out here as pretty tough, the blue armor took me a LOT of tries until I finally was able to get it, but it is doable just doing forward/strafe and looking diagonally, which I think is SR40. The berserk took me a lot of tries to even find the thing, and I started wondering if it was maybe a dummy trigger I was hearing in the walls for the blue armor one, only to eventually just push the wall and have it open. My initial inclination is to wonder why it's tagged by the eyeball switch, but to be honest, I probably would never have realized there was a secret there without the noise it made, as the brick texture is far too subtle to be noticed in the dim light unless you know it's there.

[Summer Deep]

MAP13

 

Well the mapper is clearly in a rocket launcher mood at the moment, and, if you're pistol-starting, it's just about all you really have against the powerful mix of enemies who flood into the opening arena.

 

The second phase of the level is really cleverly put together, and hazardous for the player. The pair of Cacodemons floating menacingly in the darkness, the Spectres in the shadows on the edge of the 'caldera', the teleport ambush on the balcony, and the Mancubus and Arachnotron set piece all make for potentially fatal outcomes. The progression by teleporters is neat, as is the way the main arena is lit up later in the proceedings. No SSG here, it seems, and that could catch out the unwary marine who lets down his guard while walking down the causeway towards the exit with just the regulation shotgun, and is confronted by that evil mini-ambush at the end.

 

Don't bother exploring the damaging floor area by the way - there's no radsuit, nothing to find, and you'll be dead in four or five seconds....

[Capellan]

Just broke map13.  The W1 teleport on linedef 940 has not activated and now I am stuck (unless I IDCLIP to where it is supposed to take me, which I will do).  My recommendation is to never use W1s if you can possibly avoid it.  Even when you block monsters from crossing them, as I can see you have tried to do, things can go wrong.

 

@Phobus linedef 933 also broke.  Strongly recommend you:

1. change linedefs 835 and 940 to WR; both areas are locked once you go into them so you should only activate the teleport once for each anyway

2. make linedef 2037 action type 86 (WR open door) tag 12.  That way if linedef 933 breaks the player can re-access linedef 940's teleport.  Needs to be WR in case the player does this teleport before 940.

 

That way the player should always be able to get to the exit ... albeit not that intuitively.

 

Only use W1 teleport where it cannot break the whole map.

 

 

MAP13

This was fun except for the issues noted above.

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by Capellan : more info

[eirc]

A bit late to the party but I caught up with one pretty big session playing the first eleven maps. Doing continuous (for my first time since it's balanced for it) on UV, going for all kills & all secrets without saves. Will probably relax some of these constraints if I find it too difficult later but it was doable for now (though spent quite some time looking for some secrets). Here are some quick thoughts on each map:

 

MAP01: Short and sweet, would have preferred even more imps and pinkies to punch out in the starting area since it's big enough to be on a map01 difficulty level. Was a bit confused by the fact we get the chainsaw at the end of the level (but yea continuous), cockblocked by the invisible walls and also didn't trigger the berserk secret when I first got it.

 

MAP02: Super confused by the blue key mechanism, didn't understand how it works but it eventually lowered itself somehow. The final arena had great combat (I especially loved the initial monster soup) but again I was a bit confused with it's wing areas, couldn't tell which was which since they were kinda samey.

 

MAP03: Liked the non stop action, did not like the look too much, not a fan of blocky brown bases. Jebaited by the fake exit of course.

 

MAP04: Once again well placed and good amount of monsters, buuuuut my playthrough was dominated by the fact I spent 20m trying to get the SSG. I thought it was a very cool and unique way to get it in the end but I always feel "teased" secrets should be unlocked in the same area or at least nearby. Otherwise it makes you feel too helpless looking through the whole level for them and feels kinda random. Also liked the map concept with the flats and stuff alot.

 

MAP05: Best map up to this point. Couldn't stop myself going all out on basically every fight which makes me enjoy them even more if I survive - the mancubus drop was a tad bullshit though. Have a sweet spot for SSGing imp floods though so I forgave that pretty fast :)

 

MAP06: Bestest map up this point. The defenestration added an unexpected extra dimension to the fights below. The fact you don't know what you're dropping into but you're just a badass jumping off the window guns blazing was amazing. And we get to do that twice? Loved it. The blue armor secret triggered a PTSD thought, see I've played a couple of phobos' maps before and I remember a specific one with a specific killer imp punch out anime reference hidden behind a specific climb around a server room...... Let's just say I'm pretty awful at plaforming...... Spent around 20 minutes trying to get these 5 jumps :'(

 

MAP07: A few individually cool sections but that didn't make much sense as a whole I think. Totally unmarked secret though? Not fair imho.

 

MAP08: Huge fan of this style of weirdly connecting map sections to previous and next ones. The interaction between places you've been to and places you'll go makes you understand the layout better and feel more in control in fights. And then you can throw a wrench in that by changing things in the level as the player progresses. Loved it. Also the door corridor spooked the hell out of me constantly thinking something would ambush me from behind.

 

MAP09: Again I'm not a fan of brown, shit covered levels but also again I enjoyed the action. Except for that fucking wall notch at the base of the ending staircase with its pillars getting me stuck and getting me dead. Also the secret blue armor felt a little bullshit. Kinda makes me feel I'll have to check every teleporter from all sides from now on. Please always add at least a small tell on each secret (or maybe there is and I missed it lol).

 

MAP10: Once more I liked the interconnectedness of the map a lot (only the outdoor white area felt a bit out of place). And the Vile cage at the end was amazing. Maybe it'd be fair to have one more rad suit to the nukeage area since one may wanna go there twice to get the secret? Maybe *at* the secret just to get back?

 

MAP11: Loved this one also. While complicated the layout is easy to grasp and I never got lost because each corner is unique enough to not blend in my mind. But that berserk secret.... spent 20 minutes humping every wall :/ Again unmarked secrets are not cool at all :(

 

I've also recorded everything and uploaded it to youtube so here's a playlist of that https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwEQGVB3SM5Gjo7gM8sylSMX6sYR1C3qw

[loveless]

prboom+, no saves, uv pistol starts  
map 12 

 

everything seemed to go swimmingly until about 10:00 game time.  had to go outside and do a few things i'd forgotten(water tomatoes/jalapenos, take trash in from the street).  i was worried i'd come back to the map lost.  only felt "out of it" for a bit until i remembered the hunt for yellow key. 

 

i legit worried about dying at the vile exit(thankfully, this didn't break).  didn't want to throw out a one-shot demo where i press esc and go afk for 30 minutes lol.

25years-12-loveless.7z

[loveless]

9 hours ago, DuckReconMajor said:

MAP12 - Emerald Fluid

prBoom+ 2.5.1.7um, skill 4, continuous with saves

 

I enjoyed this one, even more so than the first half of yesterday's map. 

Having Mars War fresh on the brain, the look of the map reminded me somewhat of that wad, today's map i think less modern looking than yesterday's. 

The big rooms and slime pits ironicmoustache mentioned I think is a big part of that.

This is a kind of map I'd normally get lost in pretty badly, but I actually didn't.

 

The drumless midi I thought was interesting. In your mind waiting for the rest of the band to come in actually added a suspenseful feeling in the map. I could go either way on whether this gets 'fixed' or not.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

same sentiment regarding memories of marswar but i can't agree with the midi; i found it jarring.  songs entirely without percussion make me think of ambience music/foley recordings.

[DuckReconMajor]

1 hour ago, loveless said:

i legit worried about dying at the vile exit(thankfully, this didn't break).  didn't want to throw out a one-shot demo where i press esc and go afk for 30 minutes lol.

Pressing Esc (or going into e.g. the save/load menu) doesn't show up in the demo. At least not in the prboom+2.5.1.7 I'm using, but from the bit of Googling I did I think it's universal.

It's definitely made me less worried about "gotta finish map now". 

If you press "Pause" that definitely does show up though. You can trim out pauses (on a multiple of 4 tics or something like that), but just using Escape will do.

[golbeeze]

Maps 12 and 13

I thought map 12 was ok, but had a lot of backtracking. I didn't find it too memorable and I thought I found the exit when I hadn't. Whoops!

 

Map 13 was more enjoyable. I thought the combat was really nice even though I was playing poorly. At one point, I thought the game glitched when a revenant rocket teleported me out of the normal bounds. I had actually just mashed the keyboard trying to avoid it and hit my noclip bind. Ah geez

 

[loveless]

@DuckReconMajor ahh yeah, good stuff. im still using 2.5.1.5

[Biodegradable]

MAP13 - Caldera

The kid gloves are off and Phobus gave me a right suckerpunch to the face, holy shit. This one was pretty damn action-packed, but plenty of room (despite the precarious ledge with molten lava, oh my) to maneuver and mow buggers down with my chaingun, ducking and weaving incoming Imp/Caco/Manc projectiles and grinning like a madman. Okay, I think I've found my new favourite haha. The layout was really interesting without being confusing and made a lot more use of the wide space that I thought felt empty in the last one. Really had a blast with this map.

[gaspe]

MAP13: I liked the opening area with vines and crates, it reminded a bit of Speed of Doom/Resurgence overgrown techbases. It starts also with a nice ambush with cacos coming from behind the walls, though if you are quick to clear the room with the baron you can rush inside the building and I guess the cacos wold have a hard time to enter there. The light trick to reveal the main lava room was another nice thing. The setu there is simple with monsters in various ledges and corners so at first there are fireball coming from everywhere, simple but very effective. That wide view of the sky at the southern corridor was cool and it gave a nice constrast to the more dark inner part. The only key of the level is used to get back to the starting area, it was interesting how the progression was made instead but I understood how it worked only after I looked at the editor and I found a way to broke the map if you weren't already aware of it Phobus. After taking the first teleport if you do some back and forth on the lavafall you can raise the bridge to the exit and skip the whole quest to take the teleport. I must have done it 1 time in my playthrough because I reached the exit with many some monsters left turns out I skipped the northern area with the secret and I thought that it was an optional part.

[Phobus]

@Capellan Thanks for the technical breakdown - I did see the original post before you added the detail, but it's nice to see your thoughts on fixing it line up with mine. I've got a fairly fool-proof W1 teleporter later in the set, so I don't have any qualms in fixing some of the fragility in the MAP13 setup with WR lines. As @gaspe pointed out, it is easy to trigger the bridge multiple times if you hesitate on the lava fall (my hope was that the damaging floor would deter that), so the map will still be easy to break, but at least players won't be able to get stuck if the teleports are repeatable. I'll look into the re-openable doors to make the map a bit more reliable on that front too, although I'll have to get into the editor for that. You may be glad to hear that I have already made the bridge over the lava a repeatable lift, so that it can be lowered and crossed if it does get broken the way gaspe said!

 

@eirc Thanks for joining in! Those videos were a bit of a slog, where you spent a lot of time checking for secrets, but didn't seem to stop and observe first. I've taken some notes (shown below in a spoiler) on a few fixes, including some I thought of in seeing your struggles. I might suggest that you perhaps don't consider secrets mandatory, as there's some one-time ones later in the megaWAD (one or two of which I'll probably alter for the final /idgames release). The MAP07 secret is marked on the automap, to an extent, but it could be signposted a bit more obviously, given it's a low-reward one. Likewise, the berserk on MAP11 does have a slight visual hint (I mentioned before that it uses a different brick texture), but I can make it more visible still. MAP09 the lower side texture of the secret part of the teleporter is a very different one from the rest of the teleporter (I've seen people, including you, shoot at it for this reason whilst it's up), so the clue is there :P

 

@golbeeze That Argent rocket launcher is very powerful! Despite you getting double ammo from pickups, my continuous experience isn't dissimilar (there's more ammo than I need, particularly on MAP12), so whilst the mod is helping you out a bit, you've not got too much of an advantage so far! I think you tanked two Revenant rockets and hit noclip in a panic to end up outside of the playable area like that! Your "Revenant-sense" is quite accurate still, which is always fun. Sorry to disappoint you with the lack of MAP13 Cyberdemon! They're coming later in the set...

 

Below, in a spoiler, are the changes I'll look into (and almost definitely do) once we're done with the megaWAD for the club and I've seen any further bugs/issues in the later maps. The same list is up, unspoiled, in the project thread, but as people might not be reading that as well as this, and it contains a few notes for MAP15, I figured a spoiler tag wad fair.

 

Spoiler

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: One-time teleporters can and do break in cl2 - make them repeatable and make other alterations to the level to make things fool-proof.

MAP14: A couple of ceiling lights in the outer corridor don't have the correct flat.

MAP15:
A) Make raising platform for first switch in the secret chain also a lift.
B) Make the door 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

 

 

MAP12: Emerald Fluid

Formerly "Emerald Sky" (you'll never guess what colour the second sky for Triacontathlon was...) this map was made with the restrictions from the "5 Rooms of Doom" community project in mind. I did start a map for that, but made one big complex room (now serving as the first half of my DBP18 map) and never got any further. This time the map is a bit less ambitious, but I've tried to maximise the use of each room by having a trail of switches drag you back and forth.

 

The main change for this map, other than the sky, was removing an imp from all but two of the ledges in the glowing slime falls around the big, dark pit. Whilst they were a great harassing force, they were also mostly out of auto-aim range, which made the cl2 goal for this megaWAD rather difficult to claim. Otherwise I think a significant change is putting an SSG at the start, so a pistol starter isn't relying so heavily on the rocket launcher, and the continuous player gets a bit of bonus shotgun ammo. One thing you'll all be glad I did is to no longer have the FLAT10 surfaces near the nukage doing 2/5% damage (because they were "irradiated"). It's made life a lot easier and made the weak radsuit secret less important to find.

 

I was pleasantly surprised to see the Thursday Night Survival guys making the jump from the highest platform to the soulsphere, as I hadn't thought of that, but it makes an alternative, later-access option for that secret. A few of you here have also made the same leap, so it's not just a thought crazy online players have.

 

My playing experience here was very easy, as I came in with most of a notional megasphere from the previous map and could save the soulsphere until the end. Ammo is plentiful, so I could use rockets freely and mostly avoid damage. Being able to chaingun snipe with freelook did help a little, I'll concede.

Edited June 13, 2020 by Phobus

[DuckReconMajor]

MAP13 - Caldera

prBoom+ 2.5.1.7um, skill 4, continuous with saves

 

Yet another change in aesthetics, this map plays and looks great.
I assume prboom+ is displaying the sky properly here? It looks fantastic and this balcony area is the first good look I've had at it.

I slipped out of the level before I could properly observe/appreciate the lighting affects in the middle. But even before the lighting change I thought the center area was very good.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[golbeeze]

To be fair, I was trying to hit crouch as I realized I had no chance to avoid the rockets. My crouch key is c and my noclip is bound to v, so I was very surprised when I went out of bounds! I thought the game made a mistake at first. Thank goodness it shows in the top left when commands are used. I have accidentally noclipped lots of times. My thumb tends to rest in that area...

[Phobus]

Heh, it happens! I don't have any keybinds set up like that myself, but I'm often missing keys when I'm in a rush.

 

@DuckReconMajor Yes, prboom+ is displaying the sky as a single tall sky, which is it's original design. I have to admit, I don't mind the GZDoom tiling effect either, as I think the top of the brown/black clouds looks like a rocky shore when up against the dark water at the bottom. It's a great sky - all credit to @Mechadon for all of the wonderful skies in this set.

[golbeeze]

Oh yeah, I keep forgetting. I show it at the very start (first video) of my continuous recorded plays, but it is easy to miss. I set the option double ammo to on. The idea being to try to curb my habit of conserving all ammo all the time. So far, it hasn't helped! I still feel obligated to have max ammo before leaving a room. XD

[Andromeda]

MAP13: Caldera (25 Years on Earth)

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

 

This level is a bit similar to the previous one, but I'm not complaining! Here we get even more rockets to offset the lack of a super shotgun for the pistol starters, which makes the level flow quite fast. The small progression issues from the last level are ironed out as well, the only moment where I had some trouble was that I retreated upon finding the last teleporter only to find the bridge to the exit not completely raised, leading me to think that I had broken the level - I figured out what had happened quickly though :)

 

The level's highlight is the large and dark hub area with a gorgeous lavafall in its centre, much like the huge nukage pit that's the centrepiece of MAP12. I particularly like how the whole area lights up as you progress. Combat wise I had no issues, but I almost blew myself up trying to snipe the mancubi on the lava platforms from the second teleporter room, thanks autoaim :P I liked the secret, both for its reward and the fact that it serves as a good place to take cover from enemy projectiles. Another good level overall.

 

Levels in order of preference:

Spoiler

MAP09: Skulking Death

MAP06: Destination Defenestration

MAP08: Constriction

MAP13: Caldera

MAP12: Emerald Fluid

MAP11: Bloody Denial

MAP04: Wasted Luxury

MAP07: Rat Run

MAP05: Skyline

MAP02: Bunker Buster

MAP01: Drop Pod Excursion

MAP03: Urban Renewal

MAP10: Haste Keep

[Doom_Dude]

Just started playing this one on UV, so I'm back at the beginning somewhere....

 

MAP01: Drop Pod Excursion

 

I like short maps and this one was fun enough for the size of it. Not a fan of invisible barriers and I would like to be able to explore the street more but that's not so bad, really. The street area looked really nice. It's funny the easier secret was the one I didn't get until everything else was done and I went back through the level to look around.

 

MAP02: Bunker Buster

 

This one was a fun level. I like the circular tech-base design and it was certainly fun to blast through. I thought I was going to be smart and 'jump in and out again' to get the guys in the barrel area to infight but instead I was trapped in there with them and had to run for it and survived by jumping into one of the side places. Good times.

 

Made it to map03 but only played the first bit, saved it and now I'm making a pizza. ;)

[Snikle]

MAP13: Caldera

The nukage of the last level is replaced with lava here, for this map’s large reservoir. The layout isn’t too different from the previous map, still focusing on side paths around a large, deep pool, but this one places more focus on the main room. This one was less frustrating because the switches were a bit more intuitive than the last map. I figured pretty quickly that the bridge to the exit rose a little more with each other action I did, so I just checked that room every time I ran by, eventually finding the platform useable. Like the last map there was a lot of light contrast which really made the visuals pop. The glowing teleport things at the corners were cool as hell, as were the inset exit signs.

[Summer Deep]

MAP14

 

There seemed to be something slightly old-fashioned about this, but not in a bad way - reminded me of a very polished late 1990s style. Adequately challenging from a UV pistol start and in UV continuous, but I got through it without a terminal mishap in both formats. The pink demon ambush in the nukage is probably the most dangerous moment, certainly on a first playthrough, and you need to use the rockets effectively, then the SSG to force your way out of the slime. Coming a close second are maybe those three Pain Elementals in the blue key area, whose offspring can get a bit out of control if not quickly counteracted.

 

Spent a few minutes trying to get the Soulsphere by straferunning from the canal overlooking the opening courtyard, and even made it onto the first block, but eventually found the 'back door' route to the said artefact. Wonder if it is possible to strafe to it? No idea what the second secret was, didn't actually bother looking for it.

[Capellan]

13 hours ago, Phobus said:

@Capellan Thanks for the technical breakdown - I did see the original post before you added the detail, but it's nice to see your thoughts on fixing it line up with mine. I've got a fairly fool-proof W1 teleporter later in the set, so I don't have any qualms in fixing some of the fragility in the MAP13 setup with WR lines. As @gaspe pointed out, it is easy to trigger the bridge multiple times if you hesitate on the lava fall (my hope was that the damaging floor would deter that), so the map will still be easy to break, but at least players won't be able to get stuck if the teleports are repeatable. I'll look into the re-openable doors to make the map a bit more reliable on that front too, although I'll have to get into the editor for that. You may be glad to hear that I have already made the bridge over the lava a repeatable lift, so that it can be lowered and crossed if it does get broken the way gaspe said!.

 

Honestly I don't know why those two teleporters failed for me - you seem to have done everything that should be necessary to prevent issues.

 

On reflection, making all three teleport lines into WRs and having the NE teleport room close off like the others is probably a better solution e.g. crossing line 2037 could close the door at sector 264, so you can no longer get back into that part of the map.  Crossing line 2400 could re-open that door again so that players could go back to grab the secret after reaching the exit.  (so sector 264 would have tag 21, and linedef 2037 would have tag 21 action 3).

 

Off to play map14 now.

 

[Capellan]

MAP14

I liked this one.  Some cheeky but not outrageous traps, looks pretty good, and does a better job of making the essential linearity of progression less intrusive.  Gnerally speaking a good mix of enemies too.  Perhaps a little too reliant on revenants, proportionately, especially at the exit, but that's only a minor quibble.

Edited June 14, 2020 by Capellan : wrong map number!

[golbeeze]

Map 14

I enjoyed this one. There was one nasty trap that beat me up pretty badly, but otherwise decent fights. I wasn't sure where to go for a while, but the level turned out to be more linear than it first appeared. An archvile must have been trying to get someone else and turned on me at the last moment OR I didn't notice the flames originally. Either way, he got me! I left some imps trapped in their prison forever.

 

[Pirx]

i haven't contributed here in a while, being busy, with life, other games or other doom wads... and having lost interest when i fell too much behind in the past, i thought i could write a few points as the maps seem rather short.

 

gzdoom with some cosmetics, uv, pistol starts

 

MAP01 - “Drop Pod Excursion”

easy introduction, doomguy's pod cratered near a street. it has a berserk pack on board, too. a small house with doom-cute sector furniture with assorted imps and zombies. i found the invisible walls blocking the street irritating, some obstacle like a car, earthwork, even a plain fence would have felt more natural.

 

MAP02 - “Bunker Buster”

feels disconnected from the previous my house / my city theme, it's an iwad-like abstract concrete facility, hence bunker, i guess, and you're going to bust its inhabitants. careful though with the shotgunners lurking everywhere a large, open room is the main arena where keys are lowered on pillars after you clear the adjacent rooms. could have been more barrels. 
interesting trick at the blue key: i shot the hell knight there, lowered the key's pedestal, only hear the hk still growling, which confused me. completely lowered the pedestal and there was another knight. if the intention was to confuse the player, that got me.

 

MAP03 - “Urban Renewal”

back to the town theme, also a rather small map, but manages to cram decent action in a path through buildings to get around the barriers. hop on crates, ride an elevator. it gets a bit tougher thanks to chaingunners and arachnotrons. 

 

MAP04 - “Wasted Luxury”

another house interior with plenty of sector furniture, zombies in pitch dark rooms - seeing their glowing eyes in the dark reminded me of times 25 years ago when doom was scary. finding the switch to get the ssg really helps, as the baron at the exit reminds one-

 

MAP05 - “Skyline”

abstract map again, and after the slower maps throws the player into the action. walls lower and a lot of small fries pour out. it's a lot of them though, and many shotgunners. after clearing this... either i didn't realize that i had to press the switch for the bridge at the blue key 3 times, or phobus trolled us, anyway i tried to run over repeatedly, only to wonder what's wrong with that bridge. also, maybe the wad is meant to be played continuous style, rather than pistol start, as the ssg would have made short work of the mancs at the cistern or what that is supposed to be (if it's water, it doesn't flow through the grates though...), and the imp horde at the gate was a case for said rocket surgery, but i didn't have a launcher yet. i managed to get trapped in one of the manc containers and couldn't get out.