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Capellan

Adam blathers about wads (now playing: NOVA - The Birth)

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What I find interesting about map24 is that it contains some very Darkwave0000-like designs. This is so much like the cave in SOD18 and this is a typical Darkwave landscape with exactly same texturing. :)

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death-destiny mad r i p p e d the mucous flow aesthetic on most of his later releases. then he learned french or something and kept making m a p s in that style. took him awhile before the c224 influence started to wane. not that I'm complaining, it's a great theme, and d-d/dw0000/whoever used it well.

but yeah. cc224 rules.

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Ribbiks said:

cc224 rules.

MAP24 is a marvel, but it really, really doesn't rule. If we want to talk about how stellar MAP32 is, I'm all on board, but MAP24 is an eccentric fuckfest. I shat on Requiem MAP24, but at least you can beat that in a sitting, as opposed to CC224's odyssey of endless turrets.

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I like 24 "in theory", I just don't like playing it ahaha.

Ribbiks: yeah, it is interesting how just one map can influence someone's style so much.

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dobu gabu maru said:

at least you can beat that in a sitting, as opposed to CC224's odyssey of endless turrets.

Don't forget that Capellan is NOT playing it on Ultra-Violence... And is NOT going for 100% kills. Is this map so long/so difficult then?

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Community Chest 2 - map22
Tackled the blue key wing first. Got close to the end of it, thought about two more wings of "have a billion monsters" and skipped it.


Community Chest 2 - map23
Pretty rough on a pistol start, and the copy-pasted stalagmites were very annoying. I'm sure they are supposed to be, but I am equally sure that being annoyed isn't really fun. Also didn't much care for the use of silent teleport arches. I guess it eliminates camping in some ways, but it's a very game-y feeling way to do it.

Interesting to see a cyberdemon used as a mid-map threat though, and the amount of health and ammo being doled out seemed "just enough", most of the time. I persevered and got through it. Not a map I'd be in a hurry to replay, but I suspect it is fun to watch a really good player go to work on it.

Mucus Flow is up next, I believe.

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I'd be interested to write one :-P

Actually, I liked maps 11, 13 and 19. And to a lesser extent 17 and 18.

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Community Chest 2 - map24
18% kills, baby!

I think if I tried to 100% this I would hate it with a fiery passion. I'm not a huge fan of it even as a "run past all the monsters" exercise since I prefer levels that don't require prior knowledge to complete them and I'm pretty sure it's take lottery winner levels of luck to not get boxed in and slaughtered on your first run at the map.

The map has some other issues, too:
The dinky little switches the author insists on using are also very annoying.
"Texture alignment" does not seem to be something the author has heard of, at least in the x-axis.
Sky boxes glitches in prboom+



(the turreted monsters would also be annoying for 100%ing, but not an issue for me as they were easy to blaze past in most cases)

On the plus side, the nearly silent opening is nice, and the "massive ravine fills with mucus" conclusion is a pretty sweet and ambitious level change. I also like the author's balls in creating a map where the player can ignore 2/3 of the floorspace and ALL of the keys if they have the skills and equipment to do so.

I wouldn't say I liked this level, but it's certainly an interesting experiment in map-making and I am glad I've played it.

And now I am off to watch a UV Max of this map - should be quite something to see!

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You can kill them all the ones that didn’t teleport, there is a line somewhere later that do that. Then come back for the lonely ones.

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Community Chest 2 - map25
It's another Gene Bird map and it shares many of the same issues as his map16 did - there's no real sense of flow to the map, with each area being a discrete, self-contained encounter that one resolves before linearly moving onto the next discrete, self-contained encounter. It does do a better job of setting up most of the encounters, at least - tedious door camping is not so overwhelmingly encouraged (though there are still a few encounters where it is clearly the best course of action).

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Without having comprehensively played some of the CChest megawads, something I intend to do after reading these playthroughs, I'm surprised and somehow disappointed at the varying quality of the mapsets. The Community Chests have always symbolised the Doom community to me, but finding out they used filler maps, and there are a number of boring and over-long levels, is kind of a let-down.

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Any community project will have its ups and downs. And tastes vary - some of the maps I don't like will be favorites of other people, I am sure.

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MajorRawne said:

Without having comprehensively played some of the CChest megawads, something I intend to do after reading these playthroughs, I'm surprised and somehow disappointed at the varying quality of the mapsets. The Community Chests have always symbolised the Doom community to me, but finding out they used filler maps, and there are a number of boring and over-long levels, is kind of a let-down.


CC2 is plenty symbolic of the mapping community in 2004 -- even in the modern community, there are plenty of bad fledgling mappers, and a wide variety of mapping styles, but back then the variety was more pronounced, I think, because there was a lot of experimenting with style to figure out exactly what Doom mapping was about. Nowadays, the mapping community sort of has it all figured out, and certain tropes have become dominant, as exemplified by much more polished megawads like CC4 and Resurgence. I love those modern megawads where every map is perfect, don't get me wrong, but I also sort of miss the days when something like Mucus Flows could fly out of left field as part of a random mishmash of maps and feel like something truly unique.

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Not Jabba said:

CC2 is plenty symbolic of the mapping community in 2004 -- even in the modern community, there are plenty of bad fledgling mappers, and a wide variety of mapping styles, but back then the variety was more pronounced, I think, because there was a lot of experimenting with style to figure out exactly what Doom mapping was about. Nowadays, the mapping community sort of has it all figured out, and certain tropes have become dominant, as exemplified by much more polished megawads like CC4 and Resurgence. I love those modern megawads where every map is perfect, don't get me wrong, but I also sort of miss the days when something like Mucus Flows could fly out of left field as part of a random mishmash of maps and feel like something truly unique.

I don't know about that. There are still folks with wildly divergent styles, whose tendencies totally conflict with each others' personal "rule" sets (using this word lightly), and I'm glad we still have that variety. If we ever really do have it all figured out and no longer feel the desire to take risks and experiment, that would be a shame!

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esselfortium said:

I don't know about that. There are still folks with wildly divergent styles, whose tendencies totally conflict with each others' personal "rule" sets (using this word lightly), and I'm glad we still have that variety. If we ever really do have it all figured out and no longer feel the desire to take risks and experiment, that would be a shame!


Totally. I don't think modern mapping is homogeneous. I just think that the community has grown up around certain trends. A good modern map -- regardless of how the mapper chooses to use monsters or what their particular design quirks are -- is generally difficult with a large number of monsters, but without being a horde-based slaughtermap, and it has a strong emphasis on visuals without cluttering the player's mobility. It also tends to have a *loosely* linear flow, but it weaves back into previously visited areas in interesting ways. There are always exceptions, but that's the dominant design philosophy.

Playing maps from the early 2000s, it feels like there was much less of a coherent idea about what made a good map. Source ports had introduced tons of new features, much more modern FPS games had been released since Doom, and Doom itself was starting to turn into a classic niche game that people were thinking about how to expand upon rather than just emulate. To me, it feels like there's a lot less polish but also a lot more experimentation in a megawad like CC2 than in a megawad like CC4. And there's really no way it could have happened any differently. The community has matured since then.

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Community Chest 2 - map26
Golly, that's a wholly pointless cyberdemon you have there, map. He's barely even woken up by the time you reach the exit and there's frankly no reason to fight him unless you're going for 100%.

Resistance is pretty light for most of the map, actually: there are a couple of places where chaingunners might rake you and a couple of Barons in relatively tight confines but (on HMP anyway) this really isn't map26 stuff.

The texturing on this one is certainly eclectic. Not just with having widely disparate themes to differing areas - though it sure has that. But also with lots of markedly different textures just whacked in together, like pipewall and comp textures flush against one another.

There are also a lot of narrow areas. I can't imagine this level is much fun in co-op unless you spread out as much as possible. A lot of waiting for the guy in front of you. Also a lot of waiting for moving floors, which are like elevator's even less welcome cousin.

The close confines do work okay in single player, though, especially in areas with low ceilings (though some of the staircases having ceilings that really could do with being higher). They give the map a claustrophobic feeling.

Progression is a key hunt, with a lot of switch flicking going on: normally with little immediate indication what they did. How much of this was necessary to progress and how much was for secrets, I don't know. I got 4 out of 7 though, which is fairly good for me.

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Community Chest 2 - map27
Didn't finish. Exhausted my patience somewhere in the endless quest for the red key. It's clearly a quite ambitious and technically proficient map, but not one I found any fun.

I'm pretty busy at the moment so I am not sure when I will pick up a new wad.

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I just started trawling through old DWMC threads for stuff to play, and have decided to tackle Favillesco E1.  Rather than necro a 5 year old DWMC thread to do so, I decided to necro this 3 year old thread instead :)

 

Favillesco E1M1 - E1M4

Of these, the only map I can say I enjoyed was E1M4.

 

The problems with the earlier maps?  First of all, they are visually very bland.  I like STARTAN as much as the next guy - probably more, in fact - but the maps all look very samey and the often bright lighting doesn't help.  Second, for all that this is supposed to be a love letter to KDITD, it does a singularly poor job of capturing the dynamism of Romero's maps.  Monsters are static, existing in discrete clumps that you engage and resolve before moving on.  The capacity to roam around - a key part of making Phobos an interesting place - is entirely missing in the first trio of maps.  They also tend to be rather larger than the gameplay they offer really merits.

 

E1M4 still has these issues, but it's at least a marginal improvement on every front.  There's a bit more visual variety, more encounters that don't just kind of squat in front of you waiting to be shotgunned, and a higher overall density of monsters that helps it feel more engaging on a minute-by-minute basis.  I'm crossing my fingers that the WAD is moving in the right direction, now.

 

(I do like that the author gives you plenty of chances to use barrels to splatter bad guys, though - that will never get old)

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The Curious Case of Nicolas Monti

 

Dude makes maps with a set of values in a realm their own: impressively divorced from modern sensibilities, and delivered with such conviction (evidenced alone by the magnitude of content he's produced, both in size of individual maps and the number of them he's released) that makes you step back and consider maybe he actually has latched onto something interesting. It's fun to skim his projects chronologically, you can see the gradual transition from rather traditional iwad-derived designs --> less-detailed-but-shapelier iwad-like designs --> blobular abstractness --> blobular pseudorealism. I find almost everything by him far more interesting than I do enjoyable, but I'd recommend Reticula or Erkattäññe as "peak"-Monti.

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Interesting.  Not sure when or if I will tackle any other Monti WADs, given my DWMC backlog, but you've at least managed to make him sound memorable :)

 

 

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Favillesco episodes are the best. Monti is easily one of my favourite mappers - the stuff he makes let's me go through the same kind of experience I went through back when I first played Doom when I was a kid. It's like classic iwad mapping but with bigger maps and slightly more challenging encounters. None of the stuff he's made is difficult, however :)

 

I hope you enjoy the rest of the episode.

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i finished playing through his catalogue this year, and now unabashedly call him my favorite mapper. I loved the Favillesco series(es), but they are very IWADy compared to his later works. You get the full Monti in newer stuff like Mano Laikas and Witness Of Time. (Though I must say that his old Eviltech absolutely blew me away with those dozen or so just HUGE maps in the middle.)

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The only Monti episode I've played in full is this very same Favilesco E1, which I wasn't fond of. It struck me as even easier and less detailed than KDiTD. I played a bit of a second Favilesco and bailed on that. Even by my standards it was Hitscanner Hell, with a paucity of health and armor, and rather tight ammo. I found its roundy architecture interesting but was put off by all the Doom Alpha textures and their misalignments. Then I played a map I really liked but forgot what it was.

 

However, Nicolas came across as a really nice guy on the forums, and he posted a picture of himself -- handsome chap! -- with his arms around 3 women while partying somewhere in Italy. Two thumbs up! 

 

Just now I watched Deadwing play through his WIP Evolved map. And evolved it was compared to what I last played of his, with an interesting outdoor setting, a hodge-podge of textures, some really cool secrets, some nice architecture and some decent, tricky fights. The overall sensation was one of being delightfully different. I think I'll play it myself before long.

 

Nicolas was last heard around these parts on July 28th. He last visited on August 12th. Here's hoping he'll be back to finish up Evolved.

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Favillesco E1M5

There's an iconic blue key ambush in KDITD where when you grab the key the lights go out and an imp closet opens on you for a nice up close and personal battle.

 

This map has a blue key ambush where the lights stay on and the imps, while slightly more numerous, are so far away and the space so wide open that you could safely pistol whip them if you really wanted.

 

That's a pretty good example of the general problem of Favillesco's combat.  You're often engaging monsters at such ranges, and with such space, that you're not really threatened.  This is compounded by an over-reliance on 'ambush'/'deaf' monsters.  Even in areas with many enemies, you often deal with them one or two at a time because they only wake up when they see you.

 

... but despite the anemic, all-but-incidental combat, I quite liked this map.  Monti seems to have found his groove with the visuals, which are more dynamic and varied than they were in the first three maps, and his sprawling, interconnected layout works quite well as an exploratory adventure.  As long as you accept that the combat element is just window-dressing to the search for the keys you need - because boy, do you ever get more than enough health, armour and ammo to deal with the resistance, especially with secrets - then it's actually a relatively fun 15 minutes of your time.  Or at least, so I found it to be.

 

 

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Favillesco E1M6

I didn't like this one as much as E1M5, but the same basic comments apply as for all the previous maps: it's a rather static, over-large homage to KDITD.  There are a few more instances of roaming monsters, at least, but it's not enough to really make it memorable.

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