Holy Hell

[Joe Capricorn]

Anyone remember HolyHell.wad? A map that basically is Deus Vult meeting Nuts headon. 20,000 monsters in 1 map.


And now, I may just be able to finish this map without any cheats with help from 0verpw_x.wad

It is hard, even with better weapons. Constant strategy and making use of what little space you have... if you are lucky to have any.

[TimeOfDeath]

Record a demo. gggmork did map04 in the misc demos thread.

[gggmork]

I think one map of holyhell is the 'true' map (longest), while the others are the same map divided into chunks for time and computer processing power reasons I assume. I recorded one of the 'chunks', but the 'true' map would take too much time and too many attempts, resulting in re-playing the beginning parts over and over, to interest me much as far as recording.
Tons of enemies doesn't necessarily mean high difficulty. The only kinda hard part of the chunk I played was the end cybers just because they can block you with their mass or get trapped by a wall of rockets or surprised by a rogue in a different location; otherwise you just circle around and shoot the bfg. Everyone else just infights. The beginning fight and arch viles could be hard too but not really if you use certain strategies.
If 0verpw_x is a powerful gun mod then that's basically cheating too.

[Grazza]

Wasn't this to a substantial degree just a piss-take of Deus Vult?

[The Lag]

i fire up this map pretty regularly.
despite the complete lack of ammo, i have managed to progress quite far through sheer luck and deligence.
it's actually fun...in an entirely unfair, step-on-my-balls, kind of way.

[TimeOfDeath]

I just wanted to echo what gggmork said about how lots of monsters doesn't mean high difficulty. Some maps with 1000+ monsters are totally easy compared to other maps with less *cough*timeofmaps*cough*.

[gggmork]

If the computer could handle it, you could put 30 billion hell knights and 30 billion reverents (or whatever proportion that would infight equally) in a huge arena, then just easily circle around while they kill eachother in parallel.
So infighting (how many walls are around to prevent enemies from seeing you and thus shooting eachother and whether enemies are positioned to be easily infightable), megaspheres/invulns available, type of guns/ammo available, and how much maneuvering room you have are all variables that can make a level with lots of enemies easier. But still doing any level as fast as you can can be hard.
A max run would take forever on map1. I played an hour then got careless/tired/died. 4 was easier i think. I like shorter maps so you don't have to play as safe as possible to avoid restarting all the way from the beginning if you die (if you don't use saves).

[gggmork]

There, lol, I recorded 1 hour & 25 min max on map 1 (just the first chunk) in prboomplus (figured out 24 enemies are unreachable at the end) playing casual because screw going as fast as possible for a map this long. Its a really sucky boring long unoptimized demo not worth watching. Mostly just exploiting 'block monster' lines and tediously shooting rockets.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/929w2k

[gggmork]

Here's map 3, 49:50. The whole end could have been much faster. Didn't bother killing the cybers on columns because I killed them in map 1 already.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ii4gfh

[gggmork]

The last one, map2 (hour and 2 min). And i put my old map 4 (35:48) in the same zip.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/buddwz

[TimeOfDeath]

heh, you're crazy. :)

[gggmork]

I wonder if I should try the main map 5 while they're all kinda fresh in my head. It could take 2.5 to 4.5 hours maybe. The biggest source of deaths was probably falling in unescapable lava on map3 (easy because a homing reverent missile can knock you off the narrow ledge) and that cyber part at the end, both of which would be annoying to restart all over again repeatedly for however many attempts it would take. Most of the rest is maybe doable- a lot is just tediously rocketing enemies from a fairly safe place.

[RjY]

Yes, do it!

I admit I'd watch it with -fastdemo but I'd definitely watch it :)

[myk]

Yeah, if you enjoy it, do it. At least it would be the most massive demo ever. Arguably, as you say, it's not the best of levels as some sections are pretty dull, but at the same time that makes such a long thing doable. Recording DV Map05 would be much less possible due to the number of deadly situations, and maxing something like all of Hell Revealed takes much more practice with routes or to avoid missed stuff.

One thing I noticed watching these is the effect of screen resolution. Most attacks in these levels are from a good distance against the masses or monsters on ledges and the like, thus they (and their attacks) become rather blurry at low resolutions. It's all so massive and open that the scale of everything is changed. You're always moving fast and relatively far away from the enemies.

[gggmork]

Do you know which complevel I should use if I try map 5 (I've been using cl 9, not sure if correct).

Blurryness might be lack of anti aliasing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing

[myk]

Compatibility level 9 will work, as PrBoom applies strong limit removal over basic engine behavior, though Boom won't be able to play the demo. So you're better off using 9, Boom's inability to play the result notwithstanding. Anything other than 2-4 (vanilla), 7 (Boom acting vanilla-like) and 9 (Boom) is usually pointless, except maybe 17 (also -1), which is a pain in the ass to use because it involves various individual compatibility settings that change the game and might break something in the level if not set as expected.

Others (0-1, 5-6, 10-16) are there mainly for the playback of a few or very few existing demos, such as early versions of Boom, an old TAS engine, DOSDoom, or old versions of PrBoom using their own demo version.

Perhaps I expressed myself poorly in regard to "blurry". I just meant the pixelation got in the way of visuals. In low res, monsters look like small blotches when far away, and I was watching in 320x200 (I used Boom, actually).

[Clusterone]

Does anyone have the link to the Holy Hell wad?

[myk]

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=14250

You can find most WADs by searching the idgames database.

[gggmork]

fuck, got all the way to the very end cybers in one recorded max run (3hrs 50min about where i died). I did the first 3 'chunks' fairly well then some asshat revived cacos totally screwed up the '4th chunk' area for me causing me to improvise on the cybers+archviles part with close calls all over the place, then stupidly died in a wall of rockets :(

edit: i just realized, on my computer at least, such a long & monster-filled demo can only play at normal speed or maybe 2wice as fast but choppy, because its too computationally intensive (nowhere near as fast as a normal short demo on a level with normal monster count). all well, not sure if I'll try anymore.

[Kyka]

3h, 50m? Holy goo, thats immense. If you were setting records, you could finish Doom2 around 8 times in that time. It would be like watching Lord of the Rings or Dances with Wolves or something. Do you have the demo? and just outta interest, how big is it?

[myk]

gggmork said:
i just realized, on my computer at least, such a long & monster-filled demo can only play at normal speed or maybe 2wice as fast but choppy, because its too computationally intensive (nowhere near as fast as a normal short demo on a level with normal monster count).

Yeah, I could note some slight lag (under 35 fps) in your per-section demos, and I'm guessing if you manage the all-in-one level it'll lag more evidently on my system.

Kyka said:
If you were setting records, you could finish Doom2 around 8 times in that time.

That's on a different category (speed), the max for DOOM II is just under two hours.

[Kyka]

myk said:

That's on a different category (speed), the max for DOOM II is just under two hours.

Aah, of course. Thanks for the clarification. I probably should have thought of that. :)

[gggmork]

1792 kb for that failed lmp. I might try more so I guess no point to spam a failed run yet (failed run spam anyway if anyone's insane enough to want to see it http://www.sendspace.com/file/vvp77r ). Nobody would want to watch 4+ hours of a successful run let alone a failed one, especially at normal speed. But its a kinda fun yet annoying challenge anyway.

[Kyka]

Heh. I watched about 45 minutes of the demo. My eyes started to glaze over so i stopped there. There was this one part about a half an hour in where you were dodging this one revenant rocket,a nd you were just spining around and around in circles being silly I guess, and the rocket got you anyway.

That wad is literally Knee Deep in the Dead. Man, I was losing focus after 40 odd minutes, but you played like that for 4 hours straight. I can play games for hours too, but not continuously at that level of intensity.

After watching some of that demo, I now present you with you tribal Indian name. "Dances with Rockets."