The Dean of Doom series (companion thread)

[Redead-ITA]

11 hours ago, jazzmaster9 said:

I've been seeing a reccuring theme with the recent Dean of Doom episodes and thats "Your favorite wad/that wad everyone likes, Isn't as good as you think it is" and how many people agree with his sentiments.

 

Don't know what to make of it, but thats just something I observed. 

Player Tastes change over time i guess. Let's see if im around long enough to see the "Going Down and Eviternity are bad actually" takes 10 years down the line from community members.

 

i think he just doesn't like the Xaser older works on newer episodes, and i can respect the distaste, though i don't think calling Xaser "pretentious" fits him either, the dude's work on doom mods and music shows to be quite good on those front.

In recent times i see him being picked as the go to guy if you want some help with weapons or other wild stuff and whatnot, which i guess it's fits his work better, if anything the fact that he is a jack of all trades shows his limits, that isn't to say he is immune to criticism or he can't improve.

That being said MTPain did like his eviternity entry (map26, he gave it Both A in grade and difficulty) but he did say the combat was somewhat weak.

 

As for Eviternity Dislike, I can see why it can be hated, The new monster types, lenghty maps (I personally find the final chapter to be tedious but that's just me), otex but at the end of the day, it's a bloody set of maps for a soon to be 30 year old game, that after a year of it's release it got a forum recommendation for being of good quality, we are bloody human here, No matter what, it's just an opinion.

 

In summary: it's litterally what MTPain writes on how the show works

Quote

Caveats:

- I'm an experienced player but not a doom God

- We won't always agree :(

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by Redead-ITA

[Anarkzie]

My overall opinion on the Dean's videos is that he does his best work when he actually enjoys the wad, or finds the wad good from a critical stand point. In contrast to a reviewer like Civie11 who is at his best when he's reviewing "jank", the Dean's excels at positive reviews.

 

He just sounded bored in this last video.

[Uni]

MAP05 from PRCP is probably the worst Plutonia map ever made and aside from the texture theme, it has nothing to do with Plutonia. It certainly does not feel like an outtake neither Milo nor Dario would make. 

[Foxstiel]

 

[Firedust]

Awesome episode! I hope Lainos comes back one day. He made some legendary levels.

[Shepardus]

Comatose is one of my favorite maps to play with -nomonsters. Even though I can't stand the spectral enemies to the point where my only full playthrough with monsters was using the -nodeh parameter to strip out the DeHackEd, I still love the map. Hope the Dean covers 5till L1 Complex someday.

[Roofi]

Russian mappers are a proof that using mp3/ogg tunes in maps is criminally underrated. Comatose is an exemple of atmospheric masterpiece but I can also mention more maps from the russian community known for their powerful and captivating atmosphere using a non-midi soundtrack :

 

- Map 02 "Doxylamine Moon"  by Lainos from Sacrement

- Map 15 "Floating World" by Dragon Hunter from Whitemare 2

- Map 04 "Warp of time" by Eternal from Hell ground (already feature in DoD)

 

 

- Map 11 "Controlled System" by Beewen from Sacrement (That one is maybe my favourite)

 

 

 

 

And I forgot many others.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

1 hour ago, Shepardus said:

Comatose is one of my favorite maps to play with -nomonsters. Even though I can't stand the spectral enemies to the point where my only full playthrough with monsters was using the -nodeh parameter to strip out the DeHackEd, I still love the map. Hope the Dean covers 5till L1 Complex someday.

I definitely like this way of making spectral enemies more than the zdoom stealth monsters.

Comatose is deliciously unsettling even with NoMo.

[TakenStew22]

Wormwood's rocket gimmicks are so creative. I never knew your own rockets would just pass through you.

[Devalaous]

The mappers from Ukraine and Russia make some of my favourite content. Da Will, Sacrament and ALT in particular are unforgettable. Wish that clan didn't break up during ALT's development, I want to see more stuff by Azamael(?)

 

Lainos and Eternal in particular make great stuff.

 

Really hope DoD covers the BoS wads down the line.

[nerdybunny]

Something I would really like to see mtpain do is re-upload some of his older videos with footage that is either re-recorded or re-edited so that the footage isn't resampled. I still like those older review videos but the ugly resampling filter gives me nausea and makes episodes 1 through 7 or so pretty much unwatchable.

[Somniac]

I wonder if/ when he's going to do the other Community Chests. CC4 in particular would make for a good episode, I think. 

[Devalaous]

I never hear anything at all about CC3 aside from how good Black Rain supposedly is. The rest is never spoken of. The other three all have good and infamous maps in them, or textures in 4's case, so its kind of amusing.

[Foxstiel]

 

[Firedust]

From now I'll always refer to mancubi and arachnotrons as 'dead simpletons'

[xScavengerWolfx]

I really like the idea of using only three textures, one flat and a skybox. I might try that as a funny haha style of mapping.

[Razza]

This looks like a very interesting wad to play through, and it's genuinely stunning to see how well some of these maps look. It seemed like MtPain had a fun time with this episode, his jokes were great in this one

[LadyMistDragon]

look what we got!:)

 

 

[Firedust]

Great episode once again. Epic 2 is a true dungeon-crawling masterwork. Eternal is a genius and I really wish he'd release another solo mapset one day.

[baja blast rd.]

Re 50 Shades, Mechadon's layouts sometimes feel like intricate deathmatch maps (which might be related to the fact that he made a lot of those early in his career). The opening area of Big Dwayne's Emporium is really well suited to a very "playful" type of gameplay (meaning having fun with bold, stylish stuff instead of trying to play optimally for survival). A lot of good roaming is possible. The cacodemons especially are good at following and swarming you. And time this around I noticed how good the arachs are for infights against them. 

 

The rocket launcher is a bit later than it could be (I kept expecting it to be somewhere 'in' the earlier set of loops), but that gives you something to work for and also gives a point to more evasive types of playing.  

 

 

[Xaser]

Late response re: PRCP, but both my maps for it are Old as Shit(tm) and hella rough around the edges. At the time I was going through a bit of a "meh, SSG is overrated" phase so both maps are very stingy about giving it out. I may fix that in an upcoming "remaster" thingy, though it's got custom weapons with increased power already so most of the grindiness is better by default (I hope :P). A second SSG somewhere in Helix is certainly wise at least since making the map balance so heavily dependent on the player finding a single optional area is pretty questionable in such a lengthy map.

 

Some backstory on the "Wicked Garden is inspired by Helix" bit in the textfile: I went way the hell overboard with map size and monster count with Helix, so when another slot in the project opened up, I went "OK let's do it better" and tried to make something similar but smaller and with way less monsters (exactly 99 because I set a "no more than 100" rule for myself like a NERD :P ). It still felt completely out of place in the context of the rest of the set, so it's a lesson in "don't reference your off-theme map in a themed mapset" I guess. :P

[Jimmy]

I thought the Dean was a little overly harsh to your maps in the PRCP video. Sure they're old, but they're super charming and I love the moods they evoke (plus I maintain that "Dread" is a triumphant epic of a midi). I felt if the perched monsters were making 100% kills that painful, the "it's just not worth it" rule perhaps should've come into play sooner? Playing maps in a years-old community project with a strictly completionist approach is bound to cause someone headaches.

 

I'm sure this discussion has been had already, of course. Just my two cents.

[Womp the Cat]

3 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

I thought the Dean was a little overly harsh to your maps in the PRCP video. Sure they're old, but they're super charming and I love the moods they evoke (plus I maintain that "Dread" is a triumphant epic of a midi). I felt if the perched monsters were making 100% kills that painful, the "it's just not worth it" rule perhaps should've come into play sooner? Playing maps in a years-old community project with a strictly completionist approach is bound to cause someone headaches. I'm sure this discussion has been had already, of course. Just my two cents.

It's certainly the Dean's strangest rule especially because the backbone of the show is holding maps to their own merits which is why the pistol start rule is enforced. seems like there will always be an unfair bias against maps not designed to be 100% completed.

[LadyMistDragon]

Yes, the same complaint of "window dressing" was all over the review that shall not be named. I think he said something once in the comments of youtube that "no demon shall be left alive" or something. Or I just don't like the dopey sound effect he uses when the term is used.

[jazzmaster9]

It seems to be the norm for most of the big DoomTubers that a map HAS to be UV-Max blind friendly or else its badly designed.

[treulosetomate]

I don't know exactly how he defines "window dressing". As I understand, it's low-threat sniping enemies (mostly Imps) that are tedious but not challenging to get rid off. Even when I'm not going for 100% kills, I usually want to kill those, just to make them stop harassing me from everywhere. And picking off countless individual Imps with the Chaingun isn't all that exciting. Basically, lame monster placement. Just in general. I don't know if his criticism in this particular case is justified.

 

The Dean has his own tastes and preferences, and will judge maps accordingly, just like everybody else. However, if the Dean wants to graduate further, my advice would be to loosen his rules a bit. They can be so restrictive and prevent him from enjoying - or even playing - maps that deviate from the norm. Like his insistence on playing everything on UV, despite certain map authors repeating ad nauseam that their maps are designed for HMP and "not fun" on UV, and then complaining about the high difficulty.

[baja blast rd.]

50 Shades of Graytall m13 has a RJ in the north room (SR50 too but I learned the RJ first). I don't remember what it was useful for but here's me pulling it off with no issues whatsoever.

 

 

[baja blast rd.]

One of main Resurgence's aesthetic signatures is its use of scale. map18 (Excavation Project) and map22 (Mt. Katoomba) especially aren't just big, but big relative to monster count. In fact, when I flip through Resurgence in my mind it's not too hard to run into more areas that are strikingly large and imposing, like in map26 (The Library) and even map03 (Cave of the Lost Souls), which is the first hint of it. There's also map11 (Twi-lite Massacre) which doesn't feel like it should be described as "big relative to monster count" since it's a BFG spam map, but it's clearly vertically overscaled, with the way it's ringed by that steep fall into lava (along with the vertiginous platforming part at the beginning). There's also the enormous map30 and map32, but those look like they should be that big, whereas the rest feel like intentional exercises in bigness.

 

    

 

    

 

This is, or at least definitely was at the time, atypical among very modern wads. Immensity of scale seemed to have been reserved for full-on slaughter like Sunder and the New Gothic series -- or for certain types of more old-school design. Speed of Doom hit immensity at a few points, especially map28 -- but nowhere near as much or as persistently when it did, even in the Darkwave maps.

 

What gets me about Excavation Project in particular is that the central chamber feels the central part of a Scythe-ish map geometrically -- just blown up a lot. And then that chamber is bisected into lots of smaller areas. 

 

 

That is part of why Excavation Project has more than once confounded my spatial intuition about where it ends and doesn't, which adds a lot to its mystique and sense of place. 

 

My first times playing this map, I was always surprised that this whole back region (and the paths leading to it) even existed as a fully fleshed-out area of its own. In fact it's mid-sized map in itself.

 

 

And I might be going out on a limb here because in a Scythe-like layout, even in Speed of Doom from which the rocky design scheme is inherited,  that area would be decorative scenery. It's set up to feel that way -- like the way Scythey bases sometimes have the compact base part and then rocky scenery all around the exterior. 

 

Later portions of the map lurking in the distance behind the two layers of windows. (I can't believe I'm captioning this pic as if an area is 'doing something'.) 

 

(When you are in the cyb-spectre area, you can get a closer view and notice a blue armor and lit area that has to be reached later -- but it could be just a secret you warp into. The early impression has been made.) 

 

Were it a regularly scaled Scythe-base, you'd obviously be able to see that there's some kind of area there you definitely get to; the windows would be lower, and the Pipewall "room" would be a lot closer. 

 

But since it's so largely scaled, you can't!

[head_cannon]

On 12/7/2022 at 7:37 PM, Xaser said:

I may fix that in an upcoming "remaster" thingy, though it's got custom weapons with increased power already so most of the grindiness is better by default (I hope :P).

For what it's worth, I think a lot of the charm of Wicked Garden is in how disempowered it makes the player feel, and how the player is stuck just trying to survive instead of getting the full power-fantasy "rise up and conquer all" sequence. This is also the quality that makes it feel at least a little bit like it belongs in a Plutonia tribute set, since many of the original IWAD's traps would use just one or two monsters, but placed in a way so that they'd ruin your whole day. I really like the way your map could use just one goatman, and trap you in a confined space with him so that he felt like a miniboss encounter. And the best part was how this high time-to-kill was only important at a few key choke points - otherwise it's all about exciting skillful movement instead of a boring test of patience while waiting for an HP pool to slowly empty.

 

Wicked Garden takes about 8 minutes to beat and is a thrill ride for the entire duration (except for the eerie, bizarre "otherworld" coda tacked on at the end, which I can forgive since the final escape through the trenches is the actual climax of the level). It's a really cool map: its antagonism gives it a ton of personality, and it is concise enough that the Low DPS gimmick doesn't overstay its welcome.

 

Or at least, in my case it didn't. Doom to me will always be "I have to get out alive", and not "I have to do all my chores".

Edited December 16, 2022 by head_cannon

[baja blast rd.]

I love the start of 180mpv map17. And the rest of it too, but I felt like talking about the start now. Or "start" since I end up playing a good third of the map here.

 

 

One of the most fun 'gameplay atoms' in the game, for my money at least, is reading what is going on with the action, and making reactive infighting decisions, and then not standing around and watching but moving on to something else. That also sometimes involves juggling your attention between the infighting going on and something you are fighting. The spacious, racetrack-like hub area of this map is perfect for that type of gameplay, with monster composition that is effective against you, but also each other: arachs and mancs that can pelt you from afar, revvie missiles that can hound you. The chaingunners are smartly sort-of-nerfed by only appearing where they have limited line of sight so as to not discourage bolder play. I tend to like starts that give you this amount of breathing room to push forward and play aggressively and 'dynamically'. If you simply looked at everything on paper, this doesn't exactly look like a map that would be one of the wad's standouts, but the je nais [uh…] X factor of everything pre-finale seems to be the sense of slack in its setups + the way it rewards you for using that slack. And of course the finale is a banger. 

 

The layout is abstract but, rather than consisting of just anonymous shapes and structures, there are vague hints of representation. Part of that is the way the setting feels a bit like a harbor of some kind. Part of that is the various structural gizmos, like the three key objective switch in the start room; the imp container you can neutralize to a pulp with a few rockets and hop down into; and the other smaller area right after this, with a couple mancubi in it, which opens up unexpectedly from the other side. I had a random thought a while back that maybe the best "abstraction" starts from something concrete, like a real type of place, but it's just bitcrushed more and more until it and its landmarks are only vaguely recognizable. 

 

The grungy rust textures are quite evocative. 180mpv is maybe one of the most interestingly themed and textured wads in recent memory: great at using yellows, purples, browns, and reds. it is a slapdash but it works. Idk the way I'd describe it is that there's this cleaner, brighter CC4-tex-inflected look that sometimes community projects have (for example JPCP) -- and 180mpv feels like the evil cousin of that, making the gothic horror feel really foreboding, the grimy techbases feel really grimy. And map17 is one of the grimiest of the lot. (It just hit me while writing this that this map is kind of like a darkside version of the BuraboJunior JPCP maps: a similar abstraction but basically the opposite sort of techbase vibe; sparse, sharp-tongued action instead of silly high-spirit frenzy; discrete setpieces instead of flowing through traps and encounters in every area; pastiched material craft instead of the uniform sort; no barrels?! Maybe this is a reach. :P)

 

The skybox builds the map's sense of place in broad strokes. You can get the sense that you're in a harbor or complex of some kind that is just one fragment of a larger superstructure. That is something skyboxes definitely can do.

 

^{pictured (R): roofi}