The DWmegawad Club plays: MAYhem 2020

[Phobus]

Wow - quite the positive response to my map in this set. Thanks everybody! I'd like to shout-out to @Xaser and @NaturalTvventy for the awesome resource pack and @Obsidian for the great idea with the 20 sector limitation. Really got the creative juices flowing and let me squeeze an extra map into a pretty busy month of mapping. I know there's some really good maps in this set, so to be an early highlight is a privilege!

[TheV1perK1ller]

@Phobus

Indeed. And there's good reason why your entry is highly praised. I thoroughly enjoyed it myself. I'm glad to finally partake in a community project. I found it to be most enjoyable. Particular thanks goes to@Obsidian for being such an awesome and helpful leader.

[BoxY]

MAP10 - Daybreak Station

GLBoom+, UV, pistol start

 

A very meticulously made map that for me ended up feeling weirdly bad to play. Dense heaps of detail abound on every surface, to the point that it becomes a very copy-pastey kind of shiny eyesore, and the fact that most of the map is a network of identical looking corridors doubled the sense of repetitiveness. All the various monsters regularly unleashed into these corridors increase the monotony even more, as at first I was trying to play smart, ammo efficient, careful etc. as they kept coming down the same silver hallways, here, hitscanners, imps, over there a hell knight, revenants, a mancubus perhaps...my eyes glazed over, all I could do was SSG the halls clean again and again, not thinking or moving, barely even playing.

 

Also, I have to point out this BS: the critical switch you need to press to access the BK room is marked with a blue key stripe, just like everything else activated BY the blue key (!) This is not how those markers are supposed to be used, and was terribly stupid and confusing. This is something that should have been instantly picked up during the beta and changed, and it bothers me.

 

Back to the map. After a seemingly endless span of time, I work my way back to the central arena. This fight is a long, easy and boring circlestrafe where you don't have to shoot once, and indeed shouldn't because you need plenty of rockets and shells to clean up the heap of barons left, camping the resources, the exit room, and the floor outside. This truly sucks, and if people are going to keep spamming barons like this, they should be disabled in the map editor. After getting in the exit room and killing a few completely useless revs and a pain elemental blocked by linedefs, we can exit the map, having learned nothing.

 

I respect V1per and know for a fact that he's an excellent player, so I would have liked to see something, I dunno, more structured and nuanced from him, particularly more clever encounter design to encourage smarter and better play. This wasn't it for me.

[VanaheimRanger]

 

[Capellan]

MAP10

Each individual area of this map looks great, but - apart from the outside secret, which is a nice change of pace - they all look very samey.  I struggled with navigation because I couldn't glom onto any obvious visual / geographical keys to orient myself.

 

Gameplay wise, there are plenty of monsters roaming around, but the start is probably the only time where it really feels exciting.  That's a mad scramble to find a hold the map; everything else is pretty much just slaughtering hordes of fairly ineffectual bad guys with the masses of ammo that gets chucked at you.  Even the "big blue key" fight is pretty much just a case of running laps while the cyber cleans out everything else for you, then dispatching old stompy with whatever your preferred method of execution might be.

 

Some good elements that don't quite come together.

 

[TheV1perK1ller]

@Capellan

I appreciate the concise and honest feedback. I'll learn better for next time.

[Pechudin]

MAP09: Get Up; Don't Stop (Kills: 101%, Secrets: 0%, Deaths: 0)

    Well this one took me a while to do. I wasn't suprised @Phobus was the creator since the music kind of gave it away, 25 Years on Earth still fresh in my mind. Given the title, I expected it to be a frantic dash where any kind of stop would mean certain death, but this was a map that could be methodically cleaned out, room by room. Surprising this is only 20 sectors, but by now I have figured out how to do it consistently. It seems like you can have seemingly huge maps given you restrict yourself to several combinations of ceiling and floor heights. And flats. Go wild with the wall textures though! At first I was puzzled with the silent lifts and doors, but that's the part of the restriction, I realize now. The combat is mostly roomclearing, except the final pre-exit room which gave me quite the scare. Nothing some well-placed rockets cannot solve though.

 

    I do wonder, having to join masses of sectors makes it problematic to restrict monsters' hearing, no? Either that or you will mostly use deaf monsters.

 

Verdict: A large, beautifully textured map with more or less acceptable combat. Phobus really makes the alpha textures shine, though. Those pipe rooms!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

[Pechudin]

MAP10: Daybreak Station (Kills: 100%, Secrets: 0%, Deaths: 0)

    As @Capellan mentioned, this one looks a tad samey. The sameness does lend itself to suprises though, as you walk along a corridor thinking you have cleaned out all the cubbies only to have your eardrums blown by a point-blank AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I do think this one is (and I say this with heavy heart as someone who loves microdetailing my maps) a tad overdetailed, at least on the walls. I got stuck on geometry a lot, and several times ate damage because of that. Thankfully the main room with the Cyberdemon reveal is both big enough and has no such pokey bits.

 

    Combat is decidedly more mean compared to the previous map, but if I did not check I would've though this was also @Phobus's map. Seems like these two mappers have styles that are quite similar. At any rate, quick wits are and vigilance is needed not to blunder into ambushes strewn along the way. The main fight is quite easy if you do not panic, mind the Cybie and just slalom trough the crowd letting them sort out their issues before cleaning up the remainder. All in all, this map had me paranoid and twitchy until the end, where I breathed a sigh of relief upon realizing the final two enemies were just Shotgunners.

 

Verdict: Really nice looking techbase, if a tad overdetailed on the walls. Shame I could not find a way to exit into that nice outdoor area.

[kalaeth]

HMP, no mods, continuous play, trying not to save during levels :

 

MAP10 : Let's see if this one goes by a bit faster.. Ok, starts well, good old shotgunning fun, with a clear progression and lot's of currently sealed passages.. And another GZDoom freeze. Restart time it is. Wen't for a more run'n'gun approach this time. Which was going well until the pain elemental showed up. Damn I hate lost souls, they take way too much health with each "kiss" and are really easy to miss.. Ended up shot dead by a random sarge.. And another hitscanner death.. this map has almost no cover anywhere.. And a second freeze. Sometimes I can run GZDoom for hours without a single freeze, some others it freezes every couple of minutes.. It might be something to do with how much a map shows and it might be one of the hidden programs my company loaded the laptop with... Restart. Again. And yet again... I saved before pressing the first switch, just in case it freezes once again. Pain elemental dealt with. And HKs as well. And then, freeze. And another freeze. This isn't going well today.. As such I'm gonna start saving ore often.. And another death, finally something that was my fault (trying to chaingun the PE without clearing out the room before). Ok.. out of shells, out of rockets, out of plasma. Chaingun time it is. And I found the ammo room but got revenanted to death.. Went down to chainsaw only for a bit there, but I've rearmed myself now, and I have the blue key. And the blue armor. And let's press that switch. What's the worse that could happen, right? Oh look, some imps ready to eat rockets. And revs and barons and is that a.. Missile to the face. Yup, a cow.

 This time I'm gonna try and find out how to get outside before triggering the fight. A bit of wall humping never hurt anyone. Despite the sounds he makes. Oh! I had seen the question marks but now I found the "door" outside. (Another freeze for those keeping count at home) This time i went for the berserk before going outside. A rater welcome blue ball and another freeze. Ok, as ready as I can be, let's go.

 Running inside, grabbing the key and leaving take 1 : Hellknigthed to death. And went for a lunch break, let's tackle this again. And straight run for the exit. 87% kills isn't that bad. 100% secrets.

 

death count : 7

total deaths : 64

[Horus]

@kalaeth Damn, all those GZDoom freezes sound frustrating. Are you using the latest version of GZDoom? Have you tried the mapset on prBoom+ (or another Boom-compatible sourceport) to see if it's more stable for you?

[kalaeth]

2 minutes ago, Horus said:

@kalaeth Damn, all those GZDoom freezes sound frustrating. Are you using the latest version of GZDoom? Have you tried the mapset on prBoom+ (or another Boom-compatible sourceport) to see if it's more stable for you?

this being a company laptop I don't really want to install anything else on it, I'm running GZDoom because it can fit nicely inside a folder and then I don't have to worry about clean up when they ask for the computer back.. I'm at g4.2.3 apparently, not sure if it is the latest or not, but I do have this freezes ever so often in any mapsept I've played. I gave me the bad habit of save scumming in some of them, to minimize the time redoing things because the game froze.. 

[Biodegradable]

1 minute ago, kalaeth said:

I'm at g4.2.3 apparently, not sure if it is the latest or not

 

Yeah, that's a much older version at this point, fam. Go grab the newest version, you'll likely fare a lot better.

[Pirx]

MAP10 - “Daybreak Station” by TheV1perK1ller

 

 

i'll try to go into details as the author likes feedback and i remembered his name from some demos of hard wads, so i expected something he considers challenging ;)

 

the beginning is cleaning up a bunch of rabble, but this can still do some damage as they're plinking at you from the green area outside and aren't well visible.

after the start it's about clearing corridors that look very similar and can make orientation difficult, as noted by @Capellan. 

soon, revenants and other mid-tiers are released in relatively tight spaces. if you had left enough barrels standing, use them to blow up these enemies. of these, only the revs were a threat (meaning, able to get to me, and i enjoyed a boxing match thanks to the berserk). the mancs are shot frontally as they slowly walk out of their room, and the arachnotrons can't even move away due to their legs. 

i liked the fight with the first archvile where one can dodge his spell by hiding behind very thin columns. 

 

the plinking from outside gets worse at the blue key, since there are some shotgunners who don't stand out against the brown background. i lost surprisingly much health to them because i insisted on killing the pain elemental up close. it's smarter and less heroic to let them come to the corridor leading to the bk room.

 

armed with the blue key, start a bigger party by opening the doors of the central round room. the cow inside will kill all the other inhabitants. i literally didn't fire a single shot and just kept running circles until the cow was the only one standing. 

 

after this, it's the usual archviles to the rescue. if they see you in the central key room, they'll attack and won't start resurrecting the mountain of corpses around. however you should have enough rockets at that moment to put everything down quickly. 
the rest is just clearing a straight corridor and exiting. 

 

 

overall a map i really liked. played it again for this review. some points that could have improved it imo: 

 

- some areas (the corridor / columns section) could use more diversity. they're very polished, techbase in a mixed, colorful texturing, but it's indeed much of the same. i noticed this as i returned to pick up the combat armor before opening the blue door, and went back and forth not recognizing where i was.

 

 

i also found it weird that i could't open the grates, especially the blue one although i had the blue key, and they stayed closed, but i had killed everything on both sides of the grates, so for whatever purpose they served, they only make me run a bit more at this point.

 

 

 

the skull window in the back to the exit corridor sends you back to the corridor area as if you have forgotten something? the outdoor area i guess, there's a plasma gun and a soulsphere to pick up... perhaps for the continuous player, since i didn't feel those were really needed.

i searched the corridors for a door or teleport to the outdoor area, didn't find it (well, my fault), but didn't feel like searching more due to the sameness of the architecture. which is a subjective thing, i mean, i didn't even try to learn plutonia's "hunted", yet there are people who do this in their sleep...

 

 

- i expected a more elaborate ambush at the yellow key, like 2/3-pronged attacks / teleports / closets, but all were coming frontally. even the imp / pinky rabble in the beginning doesn't try any surprise.

overall there are a generous 2(iirc) green armors, a blue one, 2 soulspheres (of which i got none, lol), and neither the plasma gun, and still looked beefy.
some might object to the whole running circles at the yellow key until the cyb gets dizzy is too easy, but i enjoyed this, as i tend to abuse infighting anyway, and even wanted to see how far i get pacifist style (far indeed)

 

regarding crashes: where. this map? i use the latest gzdoom (4.4.2) and the latest nvidia drivers and all is perfect.

 

Edited September 10, 2020 by Pirx

[DFF]

MAP10: Daybreak Station by TheV1perK1ller (100% kills/90% items/100%secrets)   Deaths: 4

Blind Run|UV|Continuous|Trailblazer 1.5

 

Damn this map was a rush. It was a very beautifully crafted substation with intense arena and corridor combat with some very stunning visuals for the low sector count. This is a great example of a map that goes all out on wall details to compensate for the sector count. 

The combat here felt great, good amounts of difficulty, with both the yellow key arena and the blue corridor switch traps being obvious highlights. The added window snipers that don't wander around was also a very nice touch. This was probably one of the more fun maps to play.

 

Visually and structurally, also very good. The details are very pleasant to look at and offer a lot of definition. The added mismatched walls with different tech and hell themes felt a bit random, and kinda unfitting, but they did liven up the dreary gray hallways so i'll see them as a plus. Also the secrets here were very good, a fun way to hide them and the outdoor secret in particular was an enjoyable one. 

 

There isn't much negative i'd say about this map, however I can agree that the hallway maze can be a bit same-my with the rest of the map, with the wall decor being the only change of scenery. I did not have trouble myself navigating, but i could see how the same corridors with the odd visual overload of the walls could be disorienting. Also the blue sphere secret was kinda meh compared to the outdoor one. This may be because it offered less reward/exploration for essentially being the same secret setup as the outdoor one. Good consistency  which I discussed in 1K lines I believe, where consistent secrets can be good for a whole megaWAD so players know what to look for, but in individual maps can lessen the enjoyment from repeated secrets, just an opinion but i would have liked something a bit more creative or unique from this one. The outdoor secret is 100% cool though.

 

Overall, a lot of fun, definitely on par with the last one, having i'd argue slightly better visuals and some more engaging combat in exchange for a quicker map that is more linear.

 

EDIT: i'm putting Daybreak lower on my list because there are some things I think that would have made it better, but as far as i'm concerned its equal with Get up;Don't Stop for my top spot.

Rankings:

Spoiler

MAP09: Get up; Don't Stop

MAP10: Daybreak Station

MAP05: Wastewater Plant

MAP01: Wet My Appetite

MAP37: Cokey-Nutz

MAP04: Deep Focus

MAP06: Return to Pain Manor

MAP08: Edge of Twilight

MAP07: Heavy Lifting

MAP35: Mystery Mayham

MAP02: Nukaged-Powered Claustrocomputer

MAP34: Mild Terror at Vacation Station

MAP36: Field Trip

MAP33: The Desert Base

MAP03: Bubble Home Bunker

 

[DuckReconMajor]

MAP10: Daybreak Station

glBoom+ 2.5.1.7um, skill 4, pistol starts with saves, no complevel specified

 

This is wonderful, excitement throughout.

I loved the outdoor areas they added a lot to the atmosphere.

The round room cyber&co fight was a race around the infighting mass, which I found quite enjoyable, throwing the archviles into the mix made it even more so.

The barrel clusters throughout were placed well and added many explosion combat opportunities.

Also lol as I'm reading this @TheV1perK1ller is at the rare Dank Marine rank

 

Spoiler

 

 

[TheV1perK1ller]

Thanks to everyone for their opinions on what was good, and what was not, about MAP10. As I said replying to Capellan's post, I will try to keep those suggestions in mind when mapping in the future. It is the first time I have released a map. I am sorry that it didn't live up to some of your expectations.

 

[Capellan]

MAP11

Very much a set-piece puzzle map, except the solution to all three set-pieces is "run in circles and wait for infighting to thin things out for you".  Not my thing at all.

 

[BoxY]

6 hours ago, TheV1perK1ller said:

Thanks to everyone for their opinions on what was good, and what was not, about MAP10. As I said replying to Capellan's post, I will try to keep those suggestions in mind when mapping in the future. It is the first time I have released a map. I am sorry that it didn't live up to some of your expectations.

 

Just want to say sorry about the unnecessarily harsh comments, I read it back later and realised I had absolutely zero reason to be so salty about a map that wasn't actually that bad at all, god knows I play worse on a regular basis. I finished the map then immediately went to the thread to bang out my thoughts when I was still feeling frustrated and impatient, but if I did the mature thing and took 5 minutes to sit and have a cup of tea first then I would have been more chill. If this is your first released map I'm sure future ones will rise in quality very fast because your mapping fundamentals are obviously very solid. gg

 

MAP11: Toxic Waltz

UV, pistol, GLBoom+

 

So far the map with the best aesthetics and music for me, monochrome voidy maps are obviously a pretty well worn genre by now but I still can't help but love them. I enjoyed the gimmicky movement puzzles, they require a bit of patience and some luck with monster movement but they kept me engaged and weren't too tightly tuned or difficult. I played slow and cautious exited at 7:21, but there are a lot of possibilities to play more aggressively. Short and sweet, but probably not for all tastes.

[tmorrow]

map11

The episode ender and the first of the more difficult maps. There are 3 non damaging toxic waste infested rooms, connected by one way teleporters. Each one requires a variant of circle strafe to win and each can be exited early once the teleporter to the next area has become available but you cannot return (so uvmaxers must full clear as they go). Definitely not everyone's "cup of tea" but I enjoyed the map nonetheless.

The first room is full of cacodemons and imps with a mancubus roaming the perimeter. You have to cause some infighting and only drop down into the middle once there's enough room to circle strafe down there. It's not too hard to strike the required rhythm to beat this room.

The second room is the hardest in my view. In a square arena, it contains revenants on the 4 walls and a cybie that is free to roam. Using the switch starts the fight and each corner of the room lowers in turn revealing a soulsphere, cells, a plasma rifle and finally the teleporter. The trick is to snatch the corner goodies and get back out without getting rocketed or running into a sea of homing fireballs.

The third room is packed full of hellknights, barons and several cyberdemons. The only trick here is to make sure the center of mass doesn't end up cornering you and there is plenty of room to move. The other hazard is running into a stray rocket.

The teleporter takes you to the death exit room. The usual caveat applies, don't press enter until the intermission screen appears or you'll restart the map instead.

map40

A large techbase built over a seas of lava. Large wide corridors connect the main areas. Open windows allow the enemy to snipe you at long range. There is plenty of ammo and health. Good fun!

[Biodegradable]

MAP11 - Toxic Waltz

UV | Continuous with Saves | GZDoom + Zagemod

 

As someone who really doesn't enjoy slaughtermaps very much and gets overwhelmed rather easily, I actually enjoyed this one. There was a sense of the map letting you know what you needed to do to help beat the odds and each section of it gave you plenty of wiggle room, which I certainly appreciated. I enjoyed the final section the best and overall, it's not a bad experience which I think is a pretty positive point given my usual distaste for this kind of combat-style. As for the map itself, It didn't really feel finished, if that make sense at all? The obvious feeling of being inside a black void with only a few blocks and textures strewn about gave it a kind of dull and amateur aesthetic, I'm sorry to say. The built objects and texture-work looks fine for the most part, and I can tell the mapper can make some interesting shapes and such, but the black void aspect hurts the map visually and I think more could've been done on that front to make it more memorable. So yeah, reasonably fun combat but really not much to say beyond that.

 

 

[TheV1perK1ller]

@BoxY No need to apologise at all man, the fact is I'm still rather new, so I was most certainly expecting some form of harsh criticism. In fact, I wanted to thank you for it. I now know what to avoid when designing for later on.

 

[Endless]

MAP10: Daybreak Station by TheV1perK1ller

LZDOOM

HMP

 

 

This is an increase in both overall quality and difficulty! A tech-base wing map with an intricate design that expands gratifyingly through a complex system of roads and rooms. We started pretty close to the exit, but we need the blue and yellow key to keep going. For this we will have to continue our journey through the demon-infested sprawling tech-base. Both the exteriors and the interiors are quite appreciable and admirable thanks to their good use of detail and fantastic texture work that delivers very sweet visuals to the eye. The difficulty is also increased, maintaining the same difficulty as the previous map. This map gives a great end with a surprise that if it takes us careless can destroy us. You better be careful with the Barons well placed in possible exits and try to avoid the attacks of the central Cyberdemon. Good luck.

Edited September 11, 2020 by Endless

[klaymeb]

MAP11 - “Toxic Waltz” by Blinds1ght

UV / Pistol start / GZDoom

 

So, well, yeah. The tone as certainly changed in the episode conclusion. From more classic combat in the previous maps, this is map consists of three rooms in sequence with their separate challenge fight. The first one is a circle strafe in a super tight area. Playing in GZDoom, I didn't have infinite actors on, but in a more vanilla setup, this room would be horrifying. After some attempts, and getting the SSG, the next room presents a Cyberdemon in a super tight area. This time we're flanked by a lot of Revenants. There's opportunities for infighting, but you'll have to kill some of the monsters while waiting for the elevators to drop. I actually like waiting for elevators to lower, some with resources and the last one with the teleporter out of the room.

 

That teleporter takes you to a wide open "slaughtery" arena with a bunch of Cyberdemons and a mess of Barons and Hell Knights. Infighting and (wide) circle-strafing is the name of the game here as well. There's a BFG that's sort of hidden, and it'll help out.

 

This map took a lot of of attempts for me, and I didn't have a lot of fun with it. I'm not a big fan of the tight quarters circle-strafing bonanza, and the last fight felt almost meaningless, since the infighting is so easy to set up. 

 

With the knowledge of the map, I went back and comfortably beat the map pacifist. Not with 100% kills, but quite close. The two first rooms are much easier pacifist. And that run was more a lot more fun than actually trying to kill stuff myself!

 

I'm not visually engaged in the map. It's non-damaging (thankfully) nukage, pillars and torches. I like void areas, but the arenas themselves could have been a lot more detailed! At least that would give you something to look at while circle-strafing.

 

This is not my kind of map; the gameplay is too one-sided, and it doesn't look particularly interesting. Running it pacifist is fun though, so that's good :)

Edited September 11, 2020 by klaymeb : too! many! exclamation! points!

[loveless]

prboom+, no saves, uv pistol starts  
map 9
deaths 0

the opening damn near killed me.  my own complacency almost got me a few times but what can you do?  this one picked up the pace well enough and maintained my interest.  it only got more fun as the map went on.

 

map 10

deaths 1

first death in the wad!  the detailing in this was surprising considering the limited sector count.

 

map 11

deaths 0

this one zapped me straight back to Dimensions from Killer5, swear to god.  the midi, the atmosphere of a "void space", and the heavy use of midtiers.  unapologetic, just how i enjoy it.

 

mayhem 2020 demos 9-10-11.7z

Edited September 11, 2020 by loveless : fixed formatting/screenshot order

[kalaeth]

HMP, no mods, continuous play, trying not to save during levels, upgraded to the latest GZDoom.

Oh f5ck. I saved on the wrong place... I'll have to pistol start this map..

 

MAP11 : ookay, this seems.. interesting. First death to a caco when I went for the SSG. second one to the cyber. As was the third one, but this time I lasted enough to grab the plasma. Death 4 :wrong turn while running around the caco-imp pit. Death 5 : cow-rocket to the face! 6 :caco-byte. 7:caco-spit. 8:likewise and I'll stop trying to kill a caco before going to the next "stage". 9: a new kind of death! Rev fireball to the face. 10 : back to the cow-rockets. 11: caco, again. This time they came to the top plataform.. 12: another one for team cow, 13, another for team caco. 14, caco. 15: cyberfucked. And no more deaths to cacos, managed to grab the SSG and port with 100% health, so I saved. 16 : rev, after they all died. Damn ball followed me for an eternity. 17 : cyber. I am consistently making it to the plasma gun by now. 18: cyber. 19 : cyber. Well, this is gonna be good practice for my circle straffing skills. I'm almost tempted to go and grab a mouse to make it easier. 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 : cyber. 25, cyber from 199 health to zero in one simple step : rocket to the back. 26,27,28, 29 cyber. And finally! I reached the teleport. Holy fuck. 30 : HK. Found the cache of weapons. 31: HK, again. And then I managed to get to the 'porter. 32: somehow I killed myself? 33, 34. I cheated. Not sure how one was supposed to do this, I telefragged everytime.. 

 

death count : 35

total deaths : 99 (oh what a nice number)

[Soulless]

MAP 10 -Daybreak Station

Loved the secrets with the question marks showing on map. Just dont know why were most of the Hell Knights & Barons kinda stuck on the cyberdemon battle, maybe a line (block monsters) or something, made things way easy. Excellent visuals all the way through.
Music was meh, but that just me hating "In Flames"

MAP 11 - Toxic Waltz

Minimalistic slaughter map made for infighting, was a lot of fun to be honest, as much as the original "Exodus" song!

 

Edited September 11, 2020 by Soulless

[DFF]

MAP11: Toxic Waltz by Blinds1ght (57% kills/90% items/100%secrets)   Deaths: 5

Blind Run|UV|Continuous|Trailblazer 1.5

 

Sadly I did not care for this map. Visually its a decently minimalist void map, with some good stark green sludge against the black. The arenas are simple in design but not ugly. However this map offers very little with its 20 sectors when compared to other maps. This reminds me a bit of bubble home at least in exploitative size, where travel space is rather limited and there is some tricks that could be done to save on sectors, however this seemed to be a shorter level anyways.

 

Combat was kinda dull, the revenant + cyber arena being the only tricky one for me. The first arena was not super interesting or hard, just was running laps until everything was dead. The second fight was again, running laps but at least being sandwiched between projectiles gave some more skill to the circle-strafing. The final fight was just a, sorry in my opinion, lazy slaughter. Just a big square room with pillars, and i think 5-6 cybers and a load of nobles. The cybers were dealt with easily, and honestly after dying once trying to kill all the nobles I couldn't be bothered. This might not be my kind of map, but I have played many arena maps and many slaughter maps before, and this one just comes of a slightly underwhelming. I just didn't care for it and found it not very engaging except for the second arena, and that was somewhat briefly.

 

MAP38: Panopticon by Solmyr (100kills/75% items/100%secrets)   Deaths: 3

Blind Run|UV|Continuous|Trailblazer 1.5

 

A rather basic but interesting tower descent with some small traps and a cyber turret making sure you keep moving. The monster count is small but still deadly. Detailing here is minimal, mostly for game play focus. There isn't much to say, ammo was a bit tight, the fights were tricky but doable, and while killing the cyber on the platform was possible, trying to fight him in between the burning barrels at the bottom was a lot trickier and more fun.

 

Rankings:

Spoiler

MAP09: Get up; Don't Stop

MAP10: Daybreak Station

MAP05: Wastewater Plant

MAP01: Wet My Appetite

MAP37: Cokey-Nutz

MAP04: Deep Focus

MAP06: Return to Pain Manor

MAP08: Edge of Twilight

MAP07: Heavy Lifting

MAP35: Mystery Mayham

MAP02: Nukaged-Powered Claustrocomputer

MAP34: Mild Terror at Vacation Station

MAP38: Panopticon

MAP36: Field Trip

MAP11: Toxic Waltz

MAP33: The Desert Base

MAP03: Bubble Home Bunker

 

[VanaheimRanger]

 

[DuckReconMajor]

MAP11: Toxic Waltz 

glBoom+ 2.5.1.7um, skill 4, pistol starts with saves, no complevel specified

 

I was like whoa am I back in Sunlust? The setup here is kind of 'Sunlust-mini' almost. I like it.

I really expected the revenants to take out the cyber. Luckily like a second of spray with the plasma finished it off.

I enjoyed these infighting setpieces.

Didn't forget the end-text this time! "jet-powered super-bidet" added to Christmas list.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Pirx]

 

MAP11 - “Toxic Waltz” by Blinds1ght

 

a map in a style that i have come to associate with ribbiks - because he made the first maps i came across several years ago, which had these design elements: void or darkness with strong contrasting colors, and slaughter-like gameplay that often has the player locked in some arena where he has to perform certain moves under threat of being overrun by monsters. if i remember correctly of course, and i might be confusing things, so feel free to add anything you know about this type of maps with locked-in / choreographed fights  and themes of void and light. the reason why these stuck in my head is how poorly i used to do in them, mostly because i played them the wrong way, that is running and gunning too much instead of using my position for controlling the movement of the monster crowd. i feel more comfortable with these locked fights today, but there's often some relatively simple trick one has to get right, and do this repeatedly, or the whole encounter will come crashing down.

 

now, @tmorrowhas described the encounters in detail. of these, the imp / caco crater is the easiest. the second one is the hardest, as you must pick up the plasma rifle and ammo while dodging a trail of homing missiles and the dumb cyber rockets until all 4 columns have lowered, and every mistake can be fatal. funny that the hard earned plasma rifle is supplanted by the bfg in the third act, which consists in moving across the edge of a large, flat field in space in order to herd a crowd of barons and knights, so they move in the right direction and don't crush the player as they do with several cybs caught between them, so many are there. quite entertaining. the map detail however is very sparse, it relies more on this contrast between the black void and the green candles everywhere and the green flames the goats throw around.