The DWmegawad Club plays: Whitemare 2

[Magnusblitz]

MAP18: City on the Edge
38% kills, 0/2 secrets

Ah, the third part of what I consider to be the "run across rock ledges ignoring everything" trilogy. Unlike the other two, which had enough ammo to actually be handled if you had the time/patience, this one seems to demand running by everything, as aside from the token single-barrel shotgun at the start, there's only a few rockets and bits of plasma to tide the player over. So run I did, and I actually enjoyed most of it since I end up doing that quite a lot when faced with a frustrating or boring grind of a map. There were a couple of places that took me quite awhile to figure out where to go (the jump near the plasma gun, and the jump onto the dead chaingunner). The end isn't quite as fun though, as it's just a dead run through a huge mess of enemies without time to really look around and enjoy it, or getting the sense of playing a platformer that the rest of the level gives.

EDIT: There is a SSG in the baron cave to the northeast that I completely missed, since it's in some darkened lava, which is pretty much the same color as the brown of the shotgun. So I suppose it is possible to fight a lot more than I originally thought.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP19: April
100% kills, 1/1 secret

I wanted to like this map, I really did. I like the "last snowmelt" aesthetic, even though the sector trees are a little bit corny, it's a good try. I was a bit worried we'd have yet another "not enough weaponry to fight the baddies" map, but thankfully the rocket launcher is given to the player pretty quickly after the first rev/AV trap. No, my issues were 1) the map bugged up and the "power station" wouldn't open (the first time it opened fine, later on, not so much) and 2) the whole "teleporting between two areas" design was a bit ham-fisted because it's also combined with new monsters teleporting into the area, which isn't fun. Trying to figure out if there's just one, or two, or even three AVs amid the huge crowds of revenants and hell nobles isn't fun. I think removing the "monsters teleporting in" part and just keeping the "teleport between two areas" mechanic would be a lot more fun.

MAP20 has 1100 monsters? FML

[Demon of the Well]

Map 19 -- April - 106% Kills / 100% Secrets
Ah, another tableau of some quaint little cabins with an utterly inexplicable industrial-size generator array in the back yard. It's a Whitemare tradition! Speaking of persisting themes, this is another map that seems heavily focused on the phasing/blinking monsters idea that seems to have been prevalent in this episode--here, the monsters tend to bounce all around the map, meadow to meadow, with little warning. This works decently well at keeping you watching your six when there are a lot of them active, but makes it difficult to actually meet up with the last few stragglers in order to finish them off, which is even more problematic for them than for you. Actual combat is pretty simple stuff, and takes place mostly on flat terrain; even though you're mostly up against some of the more dangerous hellspawn; just cull the arch-viles (which is not too hard given that there are a lot of large trees for cover) and then herd/liquidate the rest.

The map also bugged out for me--again, the door into the generator block didn't open--on both my initial Eternity attempt and on PrBoom-plus's default complevel, but it did work on -cl 9. I initially thought it bugged out again sometime afterwards, but it was not the case; I simply had to backtrack to an area I'd already backtracked to. I dunno, a lot of the actual gameplay/map progression seems pretty clumsy or badly-implemented to me, here. I get the sense that what the map is really going for is to create a whimsical atmosphere, between the synthy-gothy soundtrack, unusual 'cartoony' color palette, stylized trees, the strange symbol-plates on the ground in a couple of places, etc.--but even the aesthetic aspects I like (which is not all of them) aren't enough to win me over in this case.

[Veinen]

Massive catch-up time. Demos for maps15-18. Sorry about the large file size but because some of the demos were recorded with the older version of the wad and the demos desync with the new one, I included the old version in the zip to make sure anyone who might be interested in watching can do it without additional digging.

Map15: Floating World by Dragon Hunter

This was an excellent map. Looks very impressive and it is fucking huge, took me quite a while to finish. I really liked how the area with the secret exit looked especially. The fake bridges along the highway looked and "felt" a little funky though, not sure if I should like them or not. Monster count is actually pretty low for a map this size and honestly it wasn't a very hard map in the end. There are a few bigger horde parties but the monster density is low enough so that you shouldn't have huge problems evading death. The YK battle in the village area was probably the hardest part because of the Cyberdemon making an appearance, and because of the monsters constantly teleporting around. I thought there were more than one Cybers in the area for a while before figuring out it was only that one guy teleporting to different sides of the map constantly. Other battles were pretty fun as well and one thing I liked was that the gameplay had a lot of variety and every battle was a little different from one another. Apart from the tele madness in the village, there was some close quarter action, open space battles, fights that relied heavily on height variation and the secret exit battle which used darkness in a neat way. The progression in the map can be a little confusing though since it relies on the player to actually explore the areas instead of just running in a tunnel from point A to point B.

As for the demo in the zip, it's 90% a FDA since I very briefly played it beforehand (the Mastermind battle in the icy water), took me over a half an hour but finished with no deaths. BUT, I recorded it with the older version and it desyncs immediately with the new one so if someone is interested in watching the demo, you have to use the white2_1 -version of the wad I included in the package. Use the command line for playback since the original name of the older wad was also white2.wad.

Skipping the secret maps for now since I haven't recorded anything for them, or even finished them properly yet for that matter. Map32 looks really interesting though and the little I played was definitely fun so I'll have to check it out later.

Map16: Mystery Island by Shadowman

Ehh, I have a hard time evaluating this one. I mean I did enjoy it decently when playing it has the creepy atmosphere someone mentioned but at the same time it's kind of a slow burner and not something I feel like I'd want to replay very often. Grinding through Spectres and Cacos with the single barrel isn't very exciting or hard adding a SSG in the mix would turn it into a breeze. Otherwise the use of Cacos in this map is good and the environment fits their flying abilites well. The endgame is the obvious highlight if you crave for some real action and by then you'll already have the means to deal deal death in less tedious ways.

Map17: Abyss of Death by BigMemka

Kind of similar to map16 but still entirely different. It's another slowish map but insert height variation and the difficulty turns a notch. Climbing the mountainside you're often in a very vulnerable position and enemies are placed so that they can and will snipe you from afar. Combine those with the enemies on your way and the relatively small ledges, the climb is quite stressful actually. The fortress part is a little more hectic but again the enemies have the height advantage on you but this time you don't have to watch your step at least. More ledges follow before I got stuck when a door didn't want to open so I suicide'd and quit. This demo desyncs with the older version as well so watch it with white2_1.

Map18: City on The Edge by Chaingun Predator

Eeh, not a huge fan of this. For me, this was just running around cluelessly with obvious lack of ammunition to deal with everything, all the while my health was being chipped away bit by bit by some distant sniper Arach or HK or whatever. Didn't even finish the map since I died somewhere between the ninth and tenth roundabout at the hills looking for a way to go, and didn't exactly feel like starting over again.

No demos for the next three maps; on 19 I sucked, on 20 the map kinda sucked (pretty much agree with mouldy on all accounts with this one) and I don't even remember what map21 is. Comments on those maybe later.

[mouldy]

Map22 - “Alarming Antiquity" by BigMemka

Starting off with a fight for basic supplies it soon becomes apparent that the main hazard for this map will be my lack of mouselook, as I am riddled with bullets from above. Despite the use of different heights, most of the fighting happens on the same level as the player as you fight from area to area clearing out the enemies that confront you. The upper level is eventually reached, and from there the battle takes place on the narrow ledges that skirt the map. Or, there is always the option of dropping down to try and shoot stuff from the ground, but without mouselook thats a bit of a chore. And for some reason even though the earlier sections of map have barriers that lower to grant easy access, nobody thought to put a lift to the upper levels (unless I missed it), so falling off involves a tedious journey around the empty map to go back up the stairs. Ammo was pretty tight in places, though by the end I had more than i needed. Overall I thought it didn't really utilise the height differences very well for the fighting (which was mostly just stuff appearing from one direction), the navigation needed some shortcuts for the upper levels, and the music was horribly compressed. Looked ok though.

[Arsenikum]

May be its too late, but I decided to warn all players that Map20 is extremely unfriendly and unfair. Don't even try to record demos - you will kill all nerves. Same for Map24. In fact Map20 is passable if you know how, except for MAY BE one untested moment (there will be TWO invul spheres). 1000 monsters are including technical ones, initially there are about two hundreds or even less. But you can also consider that there are unlimited monsters on this map, you won't mistake. Also I made HMP, it is A BIT easier. And if you got into dark room with no automap - turn off iddqd, you are lost in the labyrinth, starved and dead. There is also one very unintuitive moment near the very end of the map. Also you can not climb to the blue crystal until... well you will guess.

[Demon of the Well]

I've cleared map 20, I actually rather liked it, although it is quite grueling. I ended up killing the majority of the monsters because it took me a while to figure out what to do, but somebody who knows exactly what they're doing will probably never even see half of them.

Edit:

Map 20 -- Gloominarch's Realm - 94% Kills / 100% Secrets
Right, what we have here is a big, nasty bossmap, although this is not evident from the start. The setting is a desolate, grimy necropolis, beneath which lies a huge stone vault housing the Gloominarch, a titanic, many-faced abomination from beyond the Pit, its noisome flesh weeping a lake of poisonous ichor. The whole goal of the map is to kill this towering aberration; which of course is far easier said than done, as the task quickly proves to be quite complicated and involved.

What Arsenikum and BigMemka have done is basically use several of the basic ideas of the classic Icon of Sin setup, and repurpose them into something quite a bit different from standard map 30 fare. The skinny: The Gloominarch has four major head-protusions arranged radially around its main trunk; each of these periodically opens its grotesquely equine maw and spits out either a pain elemental or a cacodemon (these come from a finite but very large supply). Each of these four orifices must be destroyed via an unhealthy diet of rockets down the gullet before the player can move on to the last phase of the battle (the mouths have Keen-things in them, of course). The problem is, the creature is so large that there's no way to get a clear shot down its multifarious windpipes from the floor, or from many other vantages in the vault (even hitting it from unintended angles without mouselook would probably be difficult, though I didn't actually try this); and so there's little recourse but to run through a pair of very nasty gauntlets (the two portals on either side of the red skull altar) in order to finally reach each of four designated firing points, one for each head. And when I say 'gauntlets', I mean it--these sections are quite lengthy and danger-laden in their own right, and of course all the while the Gloominarch is creating a veritable swarm of gasbags (which in turn tend to propagate massive clouds of lost souls) out in the main vault, not to mention the literal army of imps that endlessly crawls up out of the bowels of the earth at one point along one of the routes.

These side areas both feature some pretty staunch "Fuck you" moments in their own right; the left path has replenishing cyber-cages, and one of the paths to a firing point is arguably a mandatory secret. Heh, and the right path throws an apparently infinite number of imps at you (though they actually aren't), which you eventually end running away from, only to find yourself in a genuine, bona fide, dark-as-hell, Shadowman-style corridor maze (think THAT section from 'New City of the Damned' in Cheogsh II, those of you who have played it) that will kill you if you take certain paths (although these are signposted well enough that you have no excuse if it happens to you more than once), and eventually floods with powerful monsters, to boot. Seeing this, I couldn't help but admire the absurdity, but again, this is probably a spiritbreaker for a lot of players. Even once you make it through all that and all four heads have been destroyed, the battle isn't quite over--the player will at this point be able to climb onto the strange shrine to the luminous, blue crystal geode; awakening its mystical power (read: hitting another switch) will cause some of the stones in the area to grow, most notably two great stalagmites that eventually collide with the vault's chamber, collapsing it and finally killing the Gloominarch. This takes time, though, and the Gloominarch will begin spitting out an infinite supply of random monstrosities, classic IoS style, to try to kill you before the ritual is complete.

The amount of spectacle here is quite something; the design of the Gloominarch itself and the sector-based SFX for the destruction of the four heads and the final stalagmite sequence put a smile on my face, and there's no doubt that figuring out what needed to be done and then finally managing to do it (heh, yeah, I broke down and used a couple of saves, here) certainly engendered a satisfying feeling of accomplishment; it truly was an epic battle, not much more I can ask out of a boss battle using default DooM II building-blocks. That being said, I highly doubt most players will look upon it as fondly as I do, because the whole task really is very grueling, and certain design choices make the process more laborious than it really needs to be. It's true that the opening, aboveground section of the map is probably the most visually attractive part, but in gameplay terms it seems extraneous to the map's main idea/goal, especially given how long the Gloominarch 'fight' actually takes. Similarly, I can accept the damage-floor covering the main chamber, but the movement-slowing flesh was just too much hassle for too little gain; I tend to agree with Mouldy that using this particular port feature is a bad idea nine times out of ten. Also of note is that some of the flesh-detailing around the geode altar can actually be climbed in order to reach the lower lip of the platform (normally a stair-ladder builds once all four outer heads are ruined); this represents a pretty serious red herring that will probably amount to a lot of wasted time and frustration for many players.

I don't know, like I said I expect this will eventually annoy and alienate the vast majority of players, but just how over-the-top it is in a number of ways appeals to me personally, even though I can still see that it probably could've done with some more editing. It is an end-of-episode map that feels truly climactic, and is thematically interesting and varied in the play department (though invariably backbreaking). My worry here is that there's no way the endgame maps are going to be able to compete with this in those regards, but I guess we'll see.

[mouldy]

I'm looking forward to map24 now..

Map23 - “Trynton" by Snark

Peculiar map set in the land of the Ewoks, with a return of the goofy trees from map 19. Fair play to the author for such an unusual setting though. Hopping from tree to tree tooling up for a big fight down below, I was a bit lost for a moment without the benefit of mouselook but the platforming is fairly minor. The end fight is a sparse flat arena into which armies of monsters come and kill each other while you watch. Even the cacos were released at ground level so they could join in more easily. Well its fun to dance around them anyway seeing how many will fall before you actually need to fire a shot, in my case the mastermind won the day (with only a couple of SSG blasts to finish him off).

[dobu gabu maru]

I'm still slogging through MAP20 currently, but I wanted to ask if we have any votes for next month's (preferably older) wad. For me I'm putting all my weight behind Sunder as I have yet to finish the latter levels, and would really appreciated it if others would back me. I don't care what else we use to fill the other days of the month, as we could do a series of shorter maps to complement the Insane Gazebo's behemoth. As Club Maintainer™ I'm tempted to lock it in as the choice already, but if there's a clear other winner we can go with that.

[mouldy]

The version of Sunder I have is only 14 maps, though they are probably hardcore enough to keep most people busy for a whole month (I'd recommend the russian overkill mod for people who want to enjoy the visuals and carnage but are put off by the difficulty).

If you wanted to supplement it with something similar there is Combat Shock 1+2 which would add another 11 maps. Or the deus vult wads... I suspect most people who are into this kind of stuff will have already played all these, and people who aren't wouldn't go near it, but you never know.

[mouldy]

Ok, I had another go at map20 on HMP and now i know what went wrong last time - you see you can get up to the blue crystal by climbing up the intestines and skirting around the edge of the pillar.

So because the red key switch didn't do anything immediately apparent I climbed up to the blue crystal and hit the switch, which is why I had the monster spawners going right from the start. I thought that blue crystal switch must have opened the doors to access the rest of the map but it seems they open on a timer after pressing the red key switch.

So I guess it was completely broken the first time I played it, this time it was a lot more possible (i'm guessing the lower difficulty helped) but it still has some problems. Mainly the objectives being so obscure that you can't tell what you are meant to do. Even knowing I had to shoot in those opening mouths wasn't enough, as I was doing that and nothing was happening. Seems like you have to get a lucky shot or something, and meanwhile the whole space is filling up with an obnoxious amount of lost souls, making it impossible to hit the targets. One of them involves riding up on a pillar which was never going to happen without godmode on (the invul ran out by the time I worked out how to escape the weird flaming corridor), with endless pain elementals and ressurecting mancubi shooting at you (and hoping that the mouth opens when you reach the top). Another one of the ios sniping points has a door which closes behind you and locks you out if you jump down, so I had to noclip through it to finish killing the mouth.

I still dont know what the hell was going on once you legitimately activate the blue crystal, monsters were spawning, pillars were rising, then its game over. There's a whole bunch of other annoying stuff (like the timed bridge missile dodging luck-fest and close quarters cyberdemon fights) and there is stuff which I thought was cool, I have to admit I like the whole epic atmosphere of the map and the relentless nature of it. But the lost souls kill it for me, the rocket launcher is essential and you can hardly use it.

[kmxexii]

MAP20 just has too many moving parts, period, between the puzzles, the relentless monsters, the slowing damage floor, etc.. I managed to beat it without shooting anything into the mouths of the skull things. Why, I don't know; I couldn't get them to open but I got a victory all the same.

[Demon of the Well]

From mouldy's explanation, apparently the top part of the ladder up to the geode is preformed before you even do anything (the bottom part only forms once all the Keen-things inside the mouths have been destroyed), so it's possible to just climb up the flesh detailing and get there early, without having to play all (or most) of the map, no doubt befuddling if you happen to stumble upon it when you've already been playing 'as intended' for a while.

I think that actually destroying the heads requires the rockets to hit a very specific area; just landing them in the Hexen-portals inside of the heads didn't seem sufficient. Of course you'll know when you've successfully destroyed one because its 'throat' will explode (barrels appear/fly out as they explode) and the head will be a mess afterwards (streams of bloodfall midtex, etc.). From what I could tell, this whole spectacle is jury-rigged together with voodoo dolls and teleport lines and apparently some soulspheres or something that heal the slight amount of damage you take from knocking the dolls around with rocket splash as you simultaneously kill the Keen-things (I'm just assuming they're there, maybe it's entirely voodoo-based for all I know). I think it's all really cool, as I've already said, but I can certainly imagine it being prone to malfunction.

Just as an aside, as for the PEs/clouds of souls they create, I mitigated them by periodically letting them bunch up at certain points around the periphery of the main chamber where they were rendered harmless (e.g. the fenced area with the cage-cyber crossfire, the barred cove with the cyber behind the illusory wall, etc.), and then devastated them with RL fire. This seemed to be an encouraged tactic, since both of these vantages are lousy with piles and piles of ammo of various sorts. Some of the other trouble spots that have been mentioned, I think using the V-spheres at the right time/in the right way is more or less mandatory to clear them (e.g. the rising blood pillar head), and so it's probably possible to save yourself into a dead end pretty easily here if you misuse them or get cut off from them or whatnot.

I said I really liked the map, and I do, but it's sort of conflicting. There are seemingly a looooooot of ways it can horribly malfunction, which together with how unfriendly it is even when it's working properly will vastly limit its audience, which is a shame, because I'd really like to see future mappers attempt their own takes on something like this. Incidentally, it seems Whitemare II will probably need another bugfix update, since this isn't the only map so far with serious issues.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP20: Gloominarch's Realm
DNF

Well, I gave it a good try, but just ended up getting myself in deeper and deeper trouble - got to the point where the Cyberdemon is hiding behind the engine-looking wall, with about 400 cacodemons streaming from the caves, before I finally gave up. It's a really cool looking map, and there's a ton of detail going on, but it's just too hard (combined with the difficulty of figuring out what to do). I often saved in spots that unknowingly were then impossible to beat, such as the cube area - the exit was blocked off, I was at 40% health, no way to beat the revenants/arch-viles in that area with what I had. Ah well. Oh, and I definitely agree with the tentacles creating a slow effect, never a good thing.

[Demon of the Well]

Thinking about Sunder always makes me feel a pang, because I know in the lump of basalt that passes for my heart that it's almost certainly never going to be completed. All the same, I'm fine with playing it for next month. Whatever other WAD we go with should probably be in a different style, though, so clubbers not disposed towards Sunder's style of gameplay will have something they can partake in as well.

Map 21 -- Fires of Darkness - 100% Kills / 0% Secrets
A couple of scenario-based challenges from Kashtanka together in one map. Honestly, the two halves feel largely unrelated (emphasized by the way you are shut out of the first half as soon as you enter the second), so it's easy to talk about them separately.

I liked the first half. It effectively played and somehow looked almost like something from one of the three major 1024 megaWADs, with nearly all of the action centering on using limited numbers of monsters to put pressure on the player by dint of how little space there is to move. This kind of scenario is often more interesting when the space restriction is 'soft' like it is here, rather than when it's ironclad; that is to say, when your space is restricted because you don't want to fall and die a horrible death in a lava chasm far below, rather than when it's restricted because you're fighting in small enclosed rooms where you can't move far in any direction without running into a wall. Visually it works well enough--it's one of those vaguely 'Torment & Torture' brown-hue Quake-canyon-base things that were all the rage a few years ago but that you don't see too often anymore. Some of the 'placement detail' is a bit obtrusive, though; the armor vest and especially THAT rocket on the starting platform are needlessly difficult to pick up on account of Doom's hitboxes not playing nice with the tiny little sector-cases that the items are pixel-squeezed into.

The second half is less impressive. It's a big, flat expanse of pitch-dark scrubland with a lava river cutting through it; the goal is to advance through a hail of enemy fire to reach a switch near the battlefront which opens up a tiny closet at the start of the area, which raises a bride of stepping stones which you can cross to reach the decidedly DN3D-esque speedboat in the river on the other side and exit. The whole idea here is that enemies good at area suppression (arachnatrons, mancs, etc.) hang out at the opposite side of the area and send a constant stream of death your way as you dart through the trees to advance; indeed, the trees here are more deleterious to your well-being than any of the demons, since getting stuck on them could amount to your catching a cyberdemon rocket with your left nostril. Players comfortable in the dark and with the confidence to dart forward into the fray will probably be fine, though; the scenario is too simplistic/one-note to offer much depth, and the area too large/navigable (despite the trees and darkness) for it to pose much of a challenge. Oh yeah, the whole area is shaped like a demon's head, too, for whatever reason. Very 90s.

[mouldy]

Map24 - “Brutanasia Castle" by Arsenikum

A castle of slaughter, the idea behind this map appears to be "you die if you stop moving". There is an army of revenants parading along the castle parapets raining fire on you from every direction. Shooting them from the ground is not an option for most of the map as there is plenty of other shit to keep you busy, and hitting them is so awkward thanks to the walls and the acute angle that it hardly seems worth it. So you have to figure out the map while dealing with swarms of ground troops and getting dizzy from having to constantly move, though eventually you find some safe spots to catch your breath.

Many of the clumps of ground enemies seem to be enclosed by blocking lines, which you can be thankful for, and ammo is certainly not an issue. Neither is health really. Its just gets a bit tiring having to deal with enemies that you can't fight back for half the map. I got totally stuck trying to figure out what to do after clearing out all the ground floor monsters and had to check doom builder to figure out the door that seems to open to a brick wall which is actually a lift activated by the button you pressed earlier which you were too busy to work out what it did since all the other buttons were one-press map-progression things. If i wasn't under constant harassing fire I maybe could have worked it out, but its not really an ideal environment for problem solving. I'm not really sure what the point of that double mechanism was other than to cause confusion but I'm probably the only one who got caught out by it anyway.

So finally you get your revenge on the revenants and there's one more bit of confined bfg carnage before the exit. Its a pretty cool map overall, but the revs made it something of a save-spamming grind for me, and motion sickness from never being able to stop kind of spoiled the fun. Not sure how that could be changed without destroying the whole concept of the map though. Knowing where to go and what to do now it probably wouldn't be so bad.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP21: Fires of Darkness
63% kills, 1/1 secret

Pretty much just echo Demon on this one (as usual) - first half is fun, second half is blah. The trees in particular in the dark area are the most aggravating aspect. Ah well. I didn't have any trouble picking up the items though, might be a benefit of ZDoom.

[Veinen]

Sunder & Deus Vult II next month for maximum brutality/greatness (Combat Shocks would be fine as well). Pretty please?

Map19: April by Marat

Mixed feelings about this one. In theory it works okay, the visual style is refreshingly new and the battles are somewhat interesting "arena"-styled fights. But there is NO variety within the map itself, it felt like I did the same battle a handful of times and nothing more really. The visuals have the same springtime forest look with sector trees throughout and the only other things of note are the two simple wooden cabins and the generator thingy. Gameplay has a repeating pattern as well; fight some Demons and Nobles first, press a button and fight some Revs and an Arch-Vile or two. There's also some kind of a teleportation system for additional confusion. By themselves the fights work alright but if you slap pretty much the same battle five times in a row it loses it's appeal. But ehh, it's still pretty decent I guess.

Map20: Gloominarch's Realm by Arsenikum & BigMemka

Yup, quite a polarizing map this one. I actually did record a FDA but it contained five minutes of gameplay, followed by ten minutes of looking for the coffin switch (terrible decision to put it there, authors) and then about five more minutes of actual gameplay before dying. For some reason I didn't feel like starting over... Never even finished this actually, maybe not because it was too hard but because I had no fucking idea what to do in the main area (I immediately climbed the "crystal" the wrong way which didn't help my cause). Got like eight and a half hundred kills total while exploring all the side areas but ignored the behemoth in the middle completely because surely the authors wouldn't force precision RL:ing in a cavern filled with Lost Souls. Right? RIGHT? And yeah, damaging floor is all fine but the sticky intestines just pissed me off. The dark maze was also pretty stupid but the other parts in the sidewings were pretty good actually. The neverending Imp parade, the green fortress, the Caco waves were all rather memorable and enjoyable moments. Aesthetically this is very, very impressive and the visual style and the creepy music track create quite an ominous atmosphere. Overall I think you must have some kind of an idea on what to do to really enjoy this since it so easily turns into a gigantic clusterfuck if you linger and let things escalate. That's what happened to me and since my saves were pretty much beyond the point of no return, I decided not to attempt again right now.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 22 -- Alarming Antiquity - 100% Kills / No secrets
Another mostly outdoor engagement from BigMemka, definitely with some kind of Robert E. Howard-meets-Hexen feel. The music probably has a lot to do with that. The first thing I noticed was how compressed the track is, and how weakly flatulent the brass in it sounds, but it seemed to grow on me as I was playing, and by the end I had decided it fit the map well....I guess the part with the female/male vocalizations just kept coming at the right moments in the action. Anyway, playing through this, it dawned on me that there definitely seems to be a very strong unifying thread running through all of BigMemka's maps in Whitemare II, that being that they have all involved traversing a lot of long, narrow paths wherein monsters tend to repeatedly appear at uncomfortably close ranges. The interesting thing here, and why it didn't really occur to me until this late in the mapset, is that he doesn't accomplish this by building tunnel/corridor-centric straight-line layouts; in every case we've seen thus far, this aspect of progression has been heavily disguised, particularly here and in map 17; 17 makes an appeal to setting via the presence of the chasm, and here in 22 you spend the first half of the map traversing the few major areas at ground level, and then the second half retraversing their perimeters along the walkways. Goes to show how setting and other details can make a big difference in how two maps that are essentially the same on a gameplay/flow level can be made to feel quite different to the player, I suppose.

Anyway, the setting here is engaging enough, and the action is well-paced over the map's relatively short length (again, I think there's something intrinsically satisfying about fighting in the same areas twice, but from a different perspective on the second time), but mapflow here is very stilted, by the very nature of the layout. The thing is, it's a long linear track, but it is in no way a circuit, and contains only a single emergent shortcut very early in its course (the wooden gate near the SSG eventually lowers), so any time you step off the path for any reason--whether it's because you're exploring (and there are some pointless jumps to be made), or because monsters compel you to do so, because you didn't immediately notice the red skull, or whatever--you end up having to run through most or all of the long empty path to get back to the point where you were. It hardly registers the first couple of times you do it, but by the end of the map this very static route really gets hammered into the ground, especially given that some of the choice pickups (and, more baffling, some not-so-choice pickups) require you to jump down to a few spots solely to pick them up, and then run the whole route again. It occurs to me that the map is probably one of those that's most fun to play after you've had some time to 'rehearse' it, as it were, but on a first play its very awkward flow contrasts with some of its virtues to leave a very mixed impression.

[Steve D]

Okay, Dobu, I'll back you on Sunder, and I might even try a map or two. I know that one of them is a platforming nightmare of ultra-tall wooden posts or something, and the only way I'd even try that is if a sociopath put me at gunpoint. ;D

For the rest of us, maybe some love for TobyM's Visions of Eternity (9 maps) for some fun classic-style Ultimate Doom maps?

Another possibility is Magic-Walker's MWDoom Episode 1 (9 maps), by a new mapper who shows some real skills.

Both mapsets are for ZDoom, and I started playtesting both before release but never finished. Putting one of these on the docket would give me an excuse to finish it. ;)

[Magnusblitz]

MAP22: Alarming Antiquity
100% kills, no secrets

Another "fight your way along the map one way then traverse the cliffs the other way" map. It's a good length though, and none of the fights are tough (there's a cyber, and some viles, but they're all placed in easy-to-fight locations) so it's nice in that regard. As Demon says, after awhile the player starts to get a bit bored any time he needs to leap off and retrace all his steps to get back to the same location (areas such as the blue armor really could've had some easy steps back up). I didn't care for the music, part of it was fine, but the other part seemed a bit too... over the top for this map.

[Crusader No Regret]

Quick snippets on maps I particularly like (or in some cases, don't) I'm skipping long writeups like last month unless I feel particularly compelled.

The overall quality is higher than the first Whitemare for me.

Map 8: The first of the excellent for me. The ambushes in the woods worked well in the context of the map. They are actually fair in that they can all be spotted though that wasn't the case in my first playthrough. I'll forgive the ugliness of the textures on the limitations of the Doom engine. Other visual highlights are a boat on the river and an inaccessible cabin nearby.

Oddly, I survived the end part on the first try getting the spider to infight and kill things for me. Had some close calls in the process. An imp landed the finishing blow on the spider. Would have liked to backtrack for a secret that I skipped for later. Oh well.

Map 15: High wow factor here. Interesting secret placement too.

Map 16: Really like the atmosphere of the map. I'm with others on that it's a chore dealing with so many high HP monsters with just shotgun and chaingun. Any future replays, I'm using TNTWEAP9 to speed things up.
In an act of mercy (or lack of playtesting, hush) it's totally possible to open the door to the temple, dash in for the key, and dash out before the door closes. Does trivialize the ambush. I happen to prefer being given options.

Map 18: Music sounds like a remix from a Megaman X5 tune. Or maybe it's not intended to be a remix, I don't know. Didn't really like this one. Kept dying without making much progress (effin' revenants) though perhaps I'm doing it wrong. Seems designed to be rushed through, being picky about which targets to engage. There's not a single door to be found and only one switch for the exit which is an interesting bit of trivia.

[mouldy]

Map25 - “Inside the Pyramid" by Shadowman

Mystery switch hunting and catwalking in a gloomy pyramid. I enjoyed this even though I'm not a fan of narrow platforming, its fairly easy to navigate and not especially deadly to fall off (though it will start getting annoying if you keep doing it). The fighting is low key for the most part but made dangerous by virtue of there being no cover and limited space to move around in. All in all its a fairly simple structure of hitting switches to access new platforms, but the atmosphere is very cool, interesting use of stark lighting and the music fits perfectly. I remember commenting on the music for shadowman's other maps and I just realised he made that khorus wad with the weird russian folk music which was quite entertaining, worth checking that out.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 23 -- Trynton (a.k.a. Tarsan) - 100% Kills / No secrets
Into Sandy's City! Gratuitous scale! Sector trees at aforementioned scale! Free chainsaw! A moment or two of platforming! Big dumb totally nonthreatening arena fight! Fun for the whole family!

....that might've sounded sarcastic, but I was actually being (mostly) sincere. Talking about map 22 earlier, I think I sardonically said its demon-head forest was 'very 90s.' Trynton here is even more 90s, but in a good way. Leaving aside the obvious fact that it has a more novel theme/setting and is much more visually polished than most PWADs from that era, this nevertheless really reminds me of one of the more charming little maps you'd find in D!Zone or Demon Gate or one of the many other shovelware compilation CDs floundering about in the wake of DooM's majestic promenade down Main Street: a simplistic (but coherent) one-shot environment that revels in its freedom to create (or attempt to create) a striking scene by featuring massively overscaled spaces, and to put a whole lot of monsters down in one place just for the hell of stimulating machismo without actually requiring terribly demanding game skill. Trynton is just like that: first you get your Free Chainsaw As Advertised (incidentally, the chainsaw room totally counts as a garage, which totally makes this qualify as a MYHOUSE map), then you spend a few minutes taking in the scene while tearing through some small skirmishes with weaklings, then you do a series of hearty, grunt-inducing (though easy) jumps down to Trynton Square, and finally you have a grand old time cheerfully inciting civil unrest amongst the townfolk, whistling Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Da and feverishly gyrating your hips like an old-timey cartoon animal while they brutally eviscerate one another. It's completely and utterly nonthreatening, but in this case, I don't really care. I think this map succeeds where map 19 failed; that is, in making its point through its sense of whimsy and stylized setting rather than through any tight or nuanced gameplay.

Edit: Oh yes, in case a bugfix happens, there are some cacodemons stuck together in the Cacotree. Might be a 'leave it in', though--if you told me it was an allegorical stab at underscoring the Meaning of Friendship (TM) for Tomorrow's Children, I'd probably be happy to smile and nod in agreement. That's just the kind of mood this map has!

Map 24 -- Castle Brutanasia - 101% Kills / 0% Secrets
I've already stood up for the eccentric map 20, and I was fine with Arsenikum's (widely panned, as I recall) IoS map in the original Whitemare. I hope it has also come through in my comments during the course of various DWMC outings that I personally consider slaughtermaps--sometimes a fairly divisive style where community opinion is concerned, to say the least--to be valid and uniquely enjoyable play experiences when done well (not to mention the unique opportunities and challenges they give rise to in the area of visuals/aesthetics). Bearing these disclaimers in mind, I'm here to tell you that this map is not done well. At all. At best it's a serviceable time-killer, at worst it's anti-fun.

500+ monsters (many of whom are firmly entrenched as opposed to roving free) and a relatively compact setting make this feel more like one of the old scenario-based maps of this type, ala Hell Revealed or parts of Kama Sutra or the like, rather than the cyclopean wargames style of some of the more famous modern slaughter WADs. On paper, the concepts aren't bad: the rocket launcher is the primary weapon everywhere but the last fight (where it would be suicidal), and you have to complete a lot of tasks while under fire from enemies who are highly impractical to methodically eliminate, meaning that you must keep moving at almost all times. Unfortunately, the execution is awful; the map essentially has no pacing, and the gimmick of annoying sniper fire lasts until almost the end of the map. Monster-blocking lines that are probably intended to keep certain segments from being too unmanageable tend to interfere with earlier segments, essentially consigning both you and the monsters in certain areas (especially around the first two switches) to playing a tedious game of peekaboo snipery until one side wins the war of attrition, which tends to take a while because you can only get off a few shots at once (more on account of the revenants in the battlements than on account of what you're actually firing at), and because there are a lot of monsters, and many of them are of the more resilient types. On that point, this map is definitely guilty of having monsters that serve literally no purpose other than to be a timesink, the most egregious example being the fields of utterly useless line-blocked pinkies you have to mow down on your way to one or both of the switches.

This is the most fundamental problem, here. Presumably shit like this is supposed to help make the map challenging--e.g. I have to dodge that many more fireballs while I make sausage of the helpless hellpork--but all it really does is make the map a time-consuming grind. For the most part this is not a difficult map (although the two switch-coves can be legitimately dangerous if you slip up in certain ways), simply one that requires a lot of sweat to clear between the monster-pruning and constant jig-dancing to evade the monotonous hail of rev rockets....and who wants their play session to feel like a chore? In fairness, it gets better at the very end--I appreciate that the wave of specters sort of makes you initially second-guess yourself about what the final fight is going to be--but this one's arguably not worth playing that far, and certainly not worth playing again.

[Veinen]

FDAs for maps 22 and 23.

Map21: Fires of Darkness by Kashtanka

Yeah, I dunno about this. Sucked enough when playing for the first time that I never finished. But it's not that hard really, just didn't think it was good enough to be worth replaying. The start has some annoying tiptoeing on uneven small surfaces, my favorite thing. Good enemy placement though, the ledge Imps are pretty effective and the Cacos especially work very well in this environment. Didn't really like the second half much, got repeadetly stuck in the decorative trees, which is what killed me initially, and the battleground is basically just a dark, flat field. Meh.

Map22: Alarming Antiquity by BigMemka

Pretty decent. Quite easy though, didn't really feel like I was in huge danger at any point, even with my uncanny ability to make terrible decisions while recording FDAs. Layout is interesting in a way since the map is basically a "tunnel" but you go through the same areas twice, first on ground level and then on the ledges above. Heights aren't used much for the players advantage or disadvantage though, in the ground level part the enemies above are only mildly threatening and when you get to the top there are no enemies below to begin with. It becomes a bit of a problem in the latter parts since if you drop down to the "mid-level" ledges to collect goodies, you'll have to go all the way back to the stairs again. It's probably an over-used gimmick to tele some monsters near you when you pick something up but any action in these multiple "rounds" I did would have been appreciated. Visuals are kind of monotonous mostly but nothing too bad. Decent map like I said.

Map23: Trynton by Snark

Heh. A ridiculously easy affair happening amidst overgrown trees and a miniature city built within. Didn't really mind the complete lack of challenge because the setting is so unique. The very mild platforming was once again probably my worst enemy here... Not much to say reall though, you have to play it to appreaciate the style and the combat is not much to speak of. I too noticed the Caco trio stuck together and felt pretty bad killing them. Finally, in the old version of the wad the blue door was broken and could not be opened so I wanderer around a while and killed myself eventually. This causes the demo to eventually desync when played back with the new version. Overall I quite enjoyed this rather silly map, despite it being one of the easiest in the entire set.

[NuMetalManiak]

it looks like I've fallen behind boys. I haven't even started MAP20 yet. i just, fell off and stopped playing the wad out of uninterest.

probably won't participate next month either.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP23: Trynton / Tarsan
100% kills, no secrets

Well, this is certainly something you don't see every day... a big, lush forest level high up in the trees. The separate platforms remind me a bit of the Xen deathmatch level in the original Half-Life. At this point I think it's safe to assume the WAD authors have given up on any semblance of a story involving winter, though.

Unfortunately, it is quite easy, as almost all the monsters are gathered in the final tree ambush, and getting them to infight in the large, open flat space is no problem at all. Still, points for original design, I suppose.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP24: Castle Brutanasia
DNF

As if in response to my complaint that MAP23 was way too easy, we get this 'gem'. Huge swarms of enemies, accented by a huge swarm of revenant snipers up on the castle walls above. The setup here means the revenants are basically impossible to kill early on (as there's no walls behind them to use the rocket splash with), so the whole outside portion is fought under the constant threat of instantly being blown apart by the revenant missiles if you stop for half a second. Just too much demon meat here to be any fun, and I got tired of having to reload every ten seconds because I stopped at the wrong moment with a revenant missile behind me or because I got stuck and the monster wouldn't get out of my way or whatever. The monster-block-lined pinkie demons are the worst offender here, they are literally just a meat wall. Even after IDDQD'ing my way through the rest of the level, doesn't look like the rest was much fun either, just a huge slog through too many enemies.

MAP25: Inside the Pyramid
97% kills, no secrets

In case you didn't get enough Epic 2, we have another Egyptian-themed map here, if it wasn't obvious from the title. Unlike Epic 2's usual labyrinths, this one is mainly base in a wide-open inner room, with the labyrinth made up of a myriad of walkways rising out of a huge pit. There's a fair amount of switch hunt at first, and the design of the pit/catwalks means that it's often smarter to just jump off the ledges into a teleporter to go back to the start, rather than try and fight the ambushes using the limited space to manuever. There's a decently-sized revenant/AV fight near the end, before ending in a somewhat anti-climatic mini-pyramid room. Nothing too special here, but nothing too offensive either. And there's some nice lighting effects too.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP26: Cave Village
100% kills, 1/1 secrets

A return to normalcy with another Memfis map, and probably my favorite of the three, taking the WAD into account. Whereas MAP09 was a new-school, set-piece driven map, and MAP14 felt like an old-school IWAD designed level, this one feels like it was designed as a Whitemare level (oh look, snow, something that's been somewhat lacking in the last 10 maps...) Despite the small monster count, it's appropriately difficult on a pistol start, as the small number of monsters is counter-balanced by the small number of resources given. This is the design I much prefer; even though I had a fair number of deaths (including about 5 on the revenant/sergeant near the double-barrelled shotgun alone) it feels more like its based around player skill and smarts instead of frustrating level design. It peters out a bit towards the end, but otherwise a pretty decent map.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP27: Hidden Threat
95% kills, 1/1 secret

Definitely back in winter town, now. This one also features a relatively small amount of monsters until the last ambush, but in a few bullshitty ways that kinda puts me off - stuff like insta-pop enemies or the "enemy you just killed gets immediately replaced" crap. Or placing arachnatrons and mancubi far far away as snipers. Blah. The ending is also a bit difficult to find, I thought it was going to be something involving the doohickey near the start (especially since it had a big EXIT arrow pointing at it). Positive points? Well, I'm still a sucker for the snow design, and I liked how the map would subtly open up to create more routes as the player opened up new areas.

Lastly, the title graphics on the intermission screen were horribly screwed up on both ends.