Slaughterfest 3 [Beta_C released, 05/08/2017]

[Ribbiks]

plums said:

edit: I also know nothing about gameplay options being saved in demos or not, another thing to maybe consider.

yah this was my main concern. It would have to, right? otherwise it would be a crapshoot if other people could playback your demos (if their settings differed from the ones used while recording). I might ask this in the demos forum, I'm sure someone around here knows the answer to this, and it would save me from sifting through the source to find out.

[Phml]

arguably significantly less convenient than quickly spamming f2/f3, especially if you plan on dying a lot.

Hmm, I could see that as a benefit actually in the context of playtesting, to avoid loops of kamikaze behavior when the threat of death is completely gone.

Recordfromto and skipsec + having to change the command line, and to remember the rough time you died, *and* to go through a long black screen on large maps is too much. But I'm thinking having to go to the desktop for a few seconds might be the right kind of pace breaker.

It's annoying when speedrunning because you actually *want* to use brute force sometimes, once you've figured out you have a reasonable but not guaranteed chance for a particular strategy to work; but for FDA purposes, still in that figuring out the map stage, intuitively it sounds about right.

Plus, obviously the whole accurate compatibility thing.

From now on, some of you should get much less whiny feedback... ;)

[Archi]

Ah, forgot to say, that cybers at the end supposed to be telefragged, but it seems that it doesn't work with default compatibility.

[Ribbiks]

Phml said:

Hmm, I could see that as a benefit actually in the context of playtesting, to avoid loops of kamikaze behavior when the threat of death is completely gone.

I think you may be right. It amuses me to watch certain people play through challenging stuff, and they save in absolutely *horrible* spots, surrounded by mobs with low health, so it takes them 5000 attempts and miraculous luck to eventually survive. The micro twitch skills are irrelevant if your macro crowd-control/strategy got you stuck in a shitty unsurvivable situation. Anyways, this sort of thing is why if playing with saves I try to only use them at the beginning of encounters (or if I'm confident things are safe), to avoid getting stuck in a shit-loop. Maybe having the process be slightly inconvenient indeed further encourages this.

Archi said:

Ah, forgot to say, that cybers at the end supposed to be telefragged, but it seems that it doesn't work with default compatibility.

ahh, well fuck cl-1 then, I guess it does break stuff :p Maybe I'll try plums' method in the future. The main inconvenience there is that I usually keep overwrite existing demos so I don't have to space an rm command between each demo attempt.

[Archi]

Ribbiks said:

ahh, well fuck cl-1 then, I guess it does break stuff :p Maybe I'll try plums' method in the future. The main inconvenience there is that I usually keep overwrite existing demos so I don't have to space an rm command between each demo attempt.

Well, I don't think that it breaks with common stuff, only with bug exploits.

[plums]

Ribbiks said:

The main inconvenience there is that I usually keep overwrite existing demos so I don't have to space an rm command between each demo attempt.

If you're using a unix-type prompt, just put the rm on the same line as running prboom, when you want to record a non-saving demo, then you can still just hit up + enter to try again.

rm demoname.lmp ; prboom-plus -file blah -record demoname -other_options

It'll fail to delete the file the first time of course, because it doesn't exist, but that's fine. Or make a shell script I guess if you want to type even less.

edit for below: Hahaha, ok ok :)

[Ribbiks]

heh, ofc my bitching was pretty petty, it's indeed a pretty trivial fix. I'm afraid of change, ok?! :p

[mArt1And00m3r11339]

Archi said:

Map30: https://www.mediafire.com/?k45ncc3ycbnsod9
Textures and Red BFG inside.

Good luck.

Edit:
Extra fix: https://www.mediafire.com/?xk6vhj76j0bklaz

Edit 2:
Fixed homs: https://www.mediafire.com/?fzzfuvz8w1awixu

How do you get to the secret in the blue skull key room?

[Omnistar]

Hey, not sure if this was mentioned or not but is there a due date that these maps are to be turned in?

[Ribbiks]

Not particularly. I've seemingly adopted a "when we have enough good maps it'll eventually be released". There are a couple open slots yet.

One of these days I'll finish the maps I started for this...

[Demonologist]

I keep my promises, so here you are, enjoy your obligatory q1tex map (there's also a custom sky included in the wad itself). First of all - this map is fucking tough, so you'd better prepare yourself for some sheer brutality because I'm an evil man and I prefer taking what's mine in blood and tears.

The order of things up to the blue skull key is strict, but after that you're free to re-order the key fights at your own will. You'll also have an invul sphere to use whenever you want after that milestone, all of the fights are fully beatable without it, but I believe this thing could come in handy. There are definitely some points of uncertainty, so feel absolutely free to speak your mind on whatever that bugs you. Now go and challenge the storm.

Via Tortuosa

No difficulty settings yet, let's see about UV first.

P.S. And sorry Phml, your pet peeve is all over the place once again. The temptation is too strong to resist. Forgive me if you can.

[Ribbiks]

neat.

probably the best looking map I've seen from ya, some very cool puzzley encounters also. A few of them I'd call fantastic even, notably the RK/RSK, YSK, and BK fights. YSK was probably my favorite, very effective use of claustrophobia. RK/RSK was straightup puzzle-tier: super imposing at first, but consistently beatable with the right strat, pretty much ideal.

I do have a few grievances:

- BSK fight. the fucking BSK fight, man. The other difficult encounters in the map indeed killed me a couple times until I learned a viable strategies. This room, on the other hand, took me probably 20+ attempts. Eventually I was able to make it to the back of the hallway through a lucky combination of cyb/imp infighting and AV-painchance. I think there are a couple things wrong with this fight: 1.) it triggers by picking up the PG, even though it's superior to start by barreling rockets into the imp hallways (though it is possible to play pacifist for a bit, infighting cyb/imp, giving sufficient time for weapon switch, but it was still annoying.) Just give me the PG and let me trigger the fight separately. 2.) those mid AVs in the imp hallways... I'm fine with the ones in the back, but dealing with the 2 AVs from the side + the cyb in the main room, unless the mobs cooperate perfectly I feel there's a very good chance the player is forced to take some hits, AV blasts or rocket splash. 3.) This fight was harder than anything else in the map by a good margin, the previous fights were *much* easier, and nothing after this really reaches the same level. I vote either the first 2 AVs get nixed, or you add some soulspheres or something in the main room.

- The rivet texture you used throughout the entire map is used as a lift texture in the BK room, should probably change that.

- The RK/RSK room has wayy too much ammo. You could easily nix 600 cells and 50 rockets and I'd still leave with a full stock.

- The AVs/demons after the BSK door (west one) just felt like a waste of time. Or mainly the demons I guess. I feel similarly about the 2 HK+rev behind that one lowering wall. This map is entirely set-piece based, so completely non-threatening incidental enemies feel out of place I think.


Overall cool map, super dicky, very brutal. Some very well designed fights.

[plums]

Demonologist said:

Via Tortuosa

I've been on a bit of a Demonologist kick recently, after your map in MAYhem2048 I decided I should check out Realm of Demonology. (Which I enjoyed on HMP with pistol starts; UV got too intense for me by the 3rd map.) So now that this got posted, I decided to give it a run.

Overall I didn't find it too tough, I certainly died a number of times but that's to be expected especially on a SF map. I did make it through the start up to the plasma gun with only one death, and through the yellow card section on the first try, which I was a bit surprised about, but maybe it helped that I had an idea of what to expect having just played a bunch of your other maps.

The outlier, as Ribbiks said, is that blue skull key fight. It was quite painful, and beating it was really just a matter of brute forcing through it until things worked out for me. I ended up just trying to plow through one side of imps with the rocket launcher, while dancing about hoping that the other side would keep the cyberdemon busy, then hoping the imp corpses occupied the AVs enough. Normally I'd be fine with saying a thing like that is just too hard for me, but considering that Ribbiks also pointed it out, and that my death count for that section was probably more than the rest of the map combined, it stands out as needing a bit of work. Adding insult to grievous injury, that invulnerability is only available after this fight.

Visually it looks real good, you put that texture pack to good use mixing up the different Quake styles while keeping a feel of overall consistency. I don't care too much for that music, I feel like Quake textures work better with sinister moods rather than melancholic ones, but it's a pretty minor complaint.

[gggmork]

If you want to see me fail the blue key twice (i have no sound on this computer anymore too):
http://speedy.sh/NmzTB/sf13-dem-fda-cl9-ggg.lmp
slaughtermaps don't work well with fda sometimes cuz you have to replay lots of previous stuff to get a chance to practice on the part that killed you. I would have to save there and try multiple tactics before uvmax, which I haven't done yet. I usually like chaotic randomness (which basically means random free roaming monsters in a random environment with not too much/little maneuvering room.. usually heterogeneous species proportions except quantity varying with weakness of monster) more than a scripted series that plays nearly the same on each replay, but most maps seem to do that and that's just my opinion.

Ya'lls can put lcp2 in sf13 if you want:
http://speedy.sh/2qbWC/lcp2.wad
Or not since I already 'released' it, I don't care. It has no proof of being beatable so far and is 'chaotic randomness'.

[Demonologist]

Thanks for the feedback, guys! And I'm glad you're enjoying my stuff, plums.
Nice persistence, ggg, I would've quit fda-ing much earlier if I were you (eh, where are those days when I was able to record fdas that are 1.5-2h long...).

Okay, I've decided not to wait for more anger from other players, so here's v2:
https://www.sendspace.com/file/3y0nrm

Changes:
- HK hall: blue armor in AV alcove is now green;
- BSK: plasma gun moved away from the floor button, middle AVs in imp corridors removed (which makes overall monster count to be unimaginative 987, heh), soulsphere in arach corridors prior to the key area is now megasphere;
- RK & RSK: several ammo boxes removed, hopefully not too much;
- BK: lift texture changed.

Have fun! Do you wanna play Quake more or less now, Ribbiks?..

[ArmouredBlood]

Demo; It's 2 am, I haven't played in forever, and I had a hard day at work. I'll give it another shot in the morning, but for what I saw it's well constructed and looks good, a little forgiving in parts though. For example, I might've closed the exit off from the first large room after the hk horde, but that might've been in the first version and no one liked it. Or the arachnotrons aren't really doing much, until I assume an archvile or two come by. Nice trick with the imps and cyber, I didn't even see it warp in until I got hit in the back of the head. But again, 2 am (closer to 3 now X.x).


Oh and let me know if there's been any feedback I missed on Red Recluse ... I might work on it, despite being a year away from it.

[plums]

Demonologist said:

BSK: plasma gun moved away from the floor button, middle AVs in imp corridors removed (which makes overall monster count to be unimaginative 987, heh)

Cool, that feels much better. It's still a hard fight but more in line with the other hard encounters, and when I beat it I feel like it wasn't because the RNG gods had pity on me.

And I must be a glutton for punishment, because I'm going to agree with ArmouredBlood: you could make it a little tougher in parts. It certainly doesn't need to be harder, and it's nice that not every encounter is completely vicious, but things like closing off the entrance after the mass of HKs when you hit the switch behind the AVs would put a little more pressure on the player. Some of the incidental "non-encounter" enemies could also have their numbers boosted a bit, if you wanted. Of course balancing for 989 enemies is also important! ;)

Other misc thoughts:

* Despite just saying how it could be harder overall and that the BSK fight is good, you could optionally give the player the red keycard before the BSK fight so that they could use the invulnerability there if they wanted. Having two keys in the red key battle is a little redundant, unlike the yellow key area where it's a separate fight per key even if they're both off the same branch, and the current red card could easily be replaced with a power-up if you want to guide the player.

* One idea for easier skill levels might be to give the player a BFG early, maybe even in addition to/instead of the plasma gun. It would certainly make the map a lot easier, and would really change the way some of those fights would play out - an aspect I kind of like, though you might not.

* I really wish PrBoom+ supported flat/texture warping, a simple scroller on the teleporter starfield texture looks so plain :P Ah well.

[Demonologist]

Yeah, I was thinking about putting bfg on easy difficulty, too, so I'll most likely do that. And about keycard - it's an interesting idea, thanks, though I won't do that on UV, face the BSK fight like a man. On HMP and below - that could actually work.

I don't think there's a real need in making things harder, the map starts off easier but quickly reaches the pinnacle point and stays on that level until the end, and I think it's fine. I also don't agree with Ribbiks about non-encounter enemies, as I said before - I like some breather encounters in-between the big fights that give the player some more monsters to shoot without much thought of self-preservation, otherwise it'd be too empty (I tried to experiment with both "filler" encounters and total silence in Forevermore, for instance, and while the latter worked there it seems - I don't think it's an elegant solution overall). And increasing their numbers, on the contrary, would make exactly the thing Ribbiks told about - big time and ammo waster. Delicate balance of things...

There's definitely a problem with q1tex in terms of animated textures, there's quite a bunch of them (including liquid flats) that aren't, even though they should be. Can't really blame Afterglow for that, he did what he could and it was very long time ago, so I just search for other solutions in cases like that, even though they may seem silly.

[joe-ilya]

https://www.mediafire.com/?xolqrd1b5160zye
Weapon upgrade, it's alpha and doesn't use a texture pack yet!

[dannebubinga]

Why on earth did you put block monster lines, preventing the cacodemons and hell knights from reaching you?

[joe-ilya]

dannebubinga said:

Why on earth did you put block monster lines, preventing the cacodemons and hell knights from reaching you?

To prevent spawn-spam, they'll surround the 4 sides anyways.

[Breezeep]

We can still submit maps to this, even if it's 2014?

[Degree23]

Yep, submissions are still open as this hasn't been finished yet. SF2014 hasn't even been started, and the suggestion earlier was to drop the year name and instead have SF4 (or equivalent) instead.

joe-ilya said:

To prevent spawn-spam, they'll surround the 4 sides anyways.

That's true, but I was able to just camp in a corner and PG one side to death until I was able to escape. (The ending to this map was weird too) Maybe a better solution would be to have weaker enemies in the initial waves so you can fight your way out and spawn in the HK/Cacos after that so you have some space. Either that or a BFG would be needed initially to burst your way through. The monster block lines make it quite easy to lame the enemies to death. I loved the chaotic start though, I was running all over.

[Breezeep]

degree23 said:

Yep, submissions are still open as this hasn't been finished yet. SF2014 hasn't even been started, and the suggestion earlier was to drop the year name and instead have SF4 (or equivalent) instead.

That's odd. Isn't the deadline the end of 2014, then? and what about the current submissions?

[Degree23]

I meant SF2014 (or whatever the next one is) would be SF4, not this one. Ribbiks posted a version a few pages back that was fairly current with most slots filled, but I think there's still a space or two left even with maps submitted since then. As for this project I don't think it has a current deadline because the implicit deadline passed 8 months ago now.

[Ribbiks]

That map was slightly disastrous, joe. The zombie swarm at the start was pretty interesting for cg-centric gameplay, a cool first room I think. But the subsequent caco/hk horde with a PG was miserably tedious, the aforementioned block monster lines didn't help. The remainder of the map: the ledges of AVs and barons.. the hallways of mancubi, the rooms with 20-odd cyberdemons... just felt sloppy, very poorly balanced. monster placement isn't engaging, and feels untested, honestly.

There's more to making a slaughter map interesting than just cramming grids of monsters into large spaces. I suggest you take a look at previous slaughterfest wads and get a feel for how the maps are set up to create difficult situations. I'd also advise checking out some demos and seeing how crucial crowd control can be for large-scale fights. I'm not saying you have to mimic other styles of slaughter mapping, but having a frame of reference could be extremely helpful, "Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly", so to speak.

Breezeep said:

That's odd. Isn't the deadline the end of 2014, then? and what about the current submissions?

no pressing deadline. done when done. slaughterfest2013 --> slaughterfest 3. slaughterfest 2014 --> ???

[gggmork]

Tried uvmaxing demonologist's map w/o using invulnerability:
http://speedy.sh/uD4sF/sf13demv2-maxfail-cl9-ggg.lmp
Died on one of the easier battles, figures. Cool map, plays kinda like ribbik's map 30 of previous sf, meaning a series of isolated battles each with their own initial conditions and isolated area. Its a fun accomplishment to beat an entire map like this in one go, but can be grueling/time consuming repeatedly playing earlier battles, after each death. Which is also why I kind of think the hardest battle/part should be first rather than last, counter-intuitive to the usual concept of a hard finale, because if a part has a high probability of making you restart all the way at the beginning, its not so bad if it is close to the beginning. Something like contra (snes) is like that; you get no practice on later bosses until you re-beat all the stuff you've already beaten before, but at least doom has saves. It kinda makes more sense to me to have each battle a separate map, rather than making the win defined as doing all battles in a row w/o dying. But stringing them together has a more psychologically 'epic' overlay or something. That's just my opinion. Some cool battles in it. I'm typing words or something.

[Demonologist]

Thanks, ggg! It's always cool to see new demo stuff from ya. And thanks for thus persuading me to do some finalizing parts...

Via Tortuosa (v3)

Difficulty settings added.

HMP: overall reduction in numbers, with some problematic monsters gone. Red keycard is now in the AV alcove replacing the armor, meaning that it's possible to grab the invul much earlier. The original RK is now replaced with second invul to soften the southern section quite a bit more.

HNTR: Exactly the same as HMP except for one thing: PG is replaced by BFG. Hooray the entirely new approach to handling the majority of encounters.

Still not a walk in the park, but much more forgiving on lower difficulties. Keep in mind that cyber in BSK fight stays, he's the crucial element there. His brethren though, are fewer.

There are some misalignments and stuff and I'm aware of that, but man, I'm sooo lazy to reliably fix them. Who cares about them, anyway, they're hardly noticeable unless you start paying attention purposedly.

[darkdave1985]

which wad do i need to play this map demonologist? all textures are gone.

[Ribbiks]

^^ q1tex.wad, available here: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=10841