The DWmegawad Club plays: Serenity & Eternity & Infinity

[Capellan]

dobu gabu maru said:

You know, I'm actually pretty surprise we have yet to see a megawad project where contributors have to use the mapping programs from the mid 90s. I think it'd be exceptionally humbling for those of us spoiled by things like the 3D view mode, as I've never even had to consider how difficult it would be inserting a linedef to split a sector.

The first challenge would be getting them to run :-)

[Salt-Man Z]

E3M4: All the Marbles
This is what I'm talking about; this is where we start getting into the real memorable stuff. The jazzy music. The secret catacombs. (No foolin': that drop into the yellow key area is one of the parts of this WAD that sticks most in my mind.) The fun red key puzzle. The maze. I love this map. Well, except for the (once again) inescapable exit area; I somehow missed a half dozen or so items that I couldn't backtrack to find. The exit-hidden-behind-a-wall is kind of clever, but I don't know if I would've figured out without my GZDoom automap flagging exit linedefs for me. (It didn't help that the first time I approached the fake wall, I ran into a demon, so it seemed "solid"; of course the fact that monsters were behind it was the real giveaway in the end, so I won't complain too much.) Anyway, yes, I'll go ahead and give this map all the marbles.

[7hm]

Slot: 3 4
Map: All the Marbles
Author: Holger Nathrath, Bjorn Hermans
Notes:
It crashed halfway through the level the first time I ran it. No clue what happened there. I was recording a demo, maybe it had to do with that somehow.
Anyway, second time around, I got through it no problems. Serious mandatory secret progression, but there wasn't anything too hard to find. Most of the secrets were just: "explore the things you see". I could see the yellow key tripping you up if you didn't explore. The claustrophobic maze didn't last long enough to wear out its welcome, and I liked the tricky ending room. I thought they might do more with the nukage pit than they did.

I then ran into a wall trying to get through e3m6 pistol starting without saves, so I decided to do a continuous playthrough at the same time, and have done this map a second time now. It really loses a lot of the early tension if you play continuously, but it's still fun.

[Jaws In Space]

seRenity: E3M3 - HMP, Pistol Start

This level was kind of annoying, I tried playing it several hours earlier, but I ended up dying 3 times due to the fact that there is only 10% health in the entire map up until the nukage area, so I just quit & did some work. A few hours later I tried it again & I played through without dying at all. I didn't think too much of this map, it's a pretty linear affair & has a lot of 64x64 wide corridors. This map also had a lot of strange uses for the walkover action to open doors that you don't see very often anymore, stepping on a teleporter pad to open a door? & then there was that section in the nukage area where you walk into a dead end hallway & then have to go back to hit the switch to raise the stairs. I wasn't really a fan of that, but I guess there really isn't anything wrong with doing that either because it's not exactly hard to figure out what to do. I also wasn't a fan of the exit, I thought that it was the switch in the crate room & was kind of annoyed to find out that it was actually the teleporter pad up on the top of the crates. I did like this map more than map 1, but that's not really saying much.

serEnity: E3M4 - HMP, Pistol Start

Oh boy, lots & lots of 64x64 wide corridor mazes. This was a pretty strange gimmick filled map, a few of which worked, & a few of which didn't. It starts of decently enough, grab the armor, open the door, kill a few bad guys, & then get teleported outside. Here is where the first gimmick shows up, you need to figure out how to grab the red key. Basically the computer panels are switches that open a door on the opposite side of the room you are standing on, going through one of the doors will raise the ceiling so that you can grab one of 4 rewards. I happened to get the red key first, but then it took me a little bit to figure out how I actually did it, but I eventually got all of the goodies. The next gimmicky room was beyond the first red key door where there is a combination of crushers & moving floors, I kind of liked this room, it looked silly, but it worked. After that though I lost interest in the map because it's mostly just mazes, like E section where you go back & forth releasing monster until you you teleport out, or the literal maze section behind the yellow key door, but I did kind of like that part because it reminded me of E1M4's maze. I didn't have any trouble finding the exit, but I do think that putting it behind a solid wall texture was pretty dumb. I did like this maps varied use of lighting & better texture usage, & I do like how we see a lot more moving parts in this map, but the layout still isn't very good & game play still suffers because of the bad layout, there was even a stuck demon down in the marble maze section.

[Capellan]

e3m4

Ugh. I get that the 64-wide maze is probably an homage to e1m4, but it's still butt ugly and neither fun nor dangerous.

Of course, none of the level is dangerous. Not with a mega armor, a soulsphere, and a frickin' invulnerability up for grabs (I got the first two; skipped the last). Ooh, I wonder if that trapped caco will be a challenge?

Secret tagging was odd again, with several areas that really didn't seem to merit it getting the tag.

I did like the big room behind the red door. It's too easy to camp at said door and blow everything away, but at least it's actually a moment of excitement when you see more than four monsters on the screen at one time.

Exit behind holographic wall = sigh. I found it immediately since my response to a dead end in that location was to try for secret doors (also, I could hear a lost soul somewhere), but it still seems like a goofy and pointless thing.

My least favorite level so far.

[Magnusblitz]

E3M4: All the Marbles
96% kills, 7/13 secrets

Despite the title, this might be the easiest map yet... I guess we have to assume it's "all the marble textures" and not anything related to the stakes. Lots of tiny corridors and not much opposition. The maze after the yellow door is the Tom Hall-iest thing ever to the point of feeling like a blatant rip-off of E1M4... sadly, it chose to take the worst part of E1M4 and leave out the good parts. There's some Peterson-ish weirdness here (though the texturing would even make him blush) such as the fake wall, or the weird red key puzzle area, but overall nothing that made me want to go back and try and get max kills and "secrets" (most of the ones I found are required/not secrets). And that jazzy keyboard music... just weird. Oh, and another unmarked exit. Can't blame 1994 for that... id had clearly marked exits in all of their levels.

[Zed]

E3M4

Well, this was an strange map. First, secrets. I turn right, and a secret. Drop down, a secret. Turn right again, secret. Go ahead, secret. No problem, I think it was entertaining how the level opened, and I actually liked the little maze. Minor details like misaligned textures, a couple of stuck monsters, and I don't see the point in that rad suit. Just to drop down and kill a couple of spectres? Maybe it was useful for another secret, and that's my other complain: the unmarked exit meant I left with just 53% secrets and 97% kills. I don't remember my time, but it was around 10-12 minutes.

[Capellan]

The idea that exits should be marked took some time to gain wide currency. ID did it, but it simply wasn't something that a lot of people thought about in the heady first days of level design. I know that putting exit signs in my levels was not something that occurred to me until ... hmm, probably until someone on fidonet doom complained about it or something.

On thd other hand it took me months to work out what unpegging textures was for so maybe I was just slow :-)

[mouldy]

E3M4 - "All the Marbles"

Interesting to hear how tough it was making maps back in the day, I often forget that todays mobile phones would have been like supercomputers back then. So this map - barrels in unhelpful places and ye olde corridor maze, but otherwise it was ok. It certainly didn't want me to run out of shotgun shells. If there is one thing in these map's favour its that they are quite unpredictable, you never know for sure what kind of weirdness to expect next. Secret sectors are scattered around like leaves in the wind, I didn't find them all, but no way of knowing how many there were left to find. I've taken to check the zdoom automap before pressing any switch now in case its an exit, but in this case it wouldn't have mattered since the door locks behind you anyway.

[durian]

E3M3 - "R You Lonesome?"

Interesting map. I enjoyed the layout significantly more than the so-so combat. Despite the abundance of long, straight, narrow corridors, the map had various interesting aspects, what with the way it snakes up, down, and around itself. The progression to the yellow key was endearingly nonsensical, with it resulting in the next section of map opening up, but not actually requiring use of the key. I rather liked the progression through the section immediately after the lacklustre Baron fight and before the crate maze - nice entrance with the raising steps, and exit through the bridge over the slime. The crate maze was fine - I like that progression seemed to require an initial SR40. But then I exited the map and, despite finding various secrets, discover I only found 16%!?!? Doh.

The lighting in this part was very nice, and certainly stands up well compared to stuff produced today:

Spoiler

E3M4 - "All the Marbles"

This one was slightly better for combat - the sudden ambush with the lowering E, and again with the large red rectangle thing, were diverting enough. But again, the progression through the map was the main thing, and sufficiently interesting that I can overlook the weak combat. The little puzzle for the various spheres was cool I thought - I like it when maps have these little mini-puzzles that are inessential to the main progression. Again, there's quite a bit of up-and-down with the layout - and one very sudden bit of 'down' which I enjoyed - with the map snaking around itself. The main hall with the circular pit was fun - nice vanilla slope ceiling! I wasn't really digging the maze - too reminscent of that section from E1M4.

Capellan said:

The idea that exits should be marked took some time to gain wide currency. ID did it, but it simply wasn't something that a lot of people thought about in the heady first days of level design. I know that putting exit signs in my levels was not something that occurred to me until ... hmm, probably until someone on fidonet doom complained about it or something.

On thd other hand it took me months to work out what unpegging textures was for so maybe I was just slow :-)

Heh. Yes I remember this. When I first put an 'EXIT' sign in a map I remember it felt like an achievement of some sort, but also like I was being needlessly frivolous and showy-offy

[Walter confetti]

E3M5: is a very cool map, with a ominous atmosphere, a nonlinear layout and another desolate tech theme like in e3m2, only done in a much more "hellish" and coherent way. The best part is the blue skull crater room and the lighting work, also texturing and detail are well placed.

The part i don't like that much are the ashwall (OT: or the sandy rocks that are used for placeholder for the ashwall textures in the freedoom iwad, also now the GRAY and the ICK wall textures are made under the same chromatic pallete, wtf? Now looks all really whiter than before!) corridor trap with that locking door, that aren't possible to open back if you for mistake try to get back where you was(for me, i was trying to elude some monster attack and BAM! Get locked in the hallway like a asshole! Time to use idclip to get out...), also the non-toxic toxic liquids. Ok, the non-toxic nukage in the marble section with the yellow door / key was kind of cool, but the lava that don't hurt you at all in the crater room that i mentioned before? In this level i maybe reached the level of God, that even lava don't hurt me? No, i don't played this part and this map with the IDDQD cheat, just... i can walk in lava.

Overall is a pretty cool map, the best so far. Would replay again.

[scifista42]

E3M5 - "Dungeons of the Dark"

Texturing still sucks, combat mostly too (though it's getting better)... But good ideas keep flowing, even if imperfectly executed. I liked the usage of cages in this map, sector lighting in certain areas, sudden encounter of a liquid (nondamaging) floor, the BK jump, and the gate thing after red door. Good music again, it set the best mood for a "relaxation" demon killing. :)

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

SERENITY.WAD: E3M4

Even better. This tended to have more interesting architectural features than the previous. Mostly green marble temple (one of my favorite themes) with some pleasantly Petersenesque sidetracks in texturing here and there. Pretty decent visuals especially as the early days go; the lighting effects continue and there are even some nice curved midbar walls and stuff.

The puzzle in the computer/red key room was somewhat interesting, though the insides of the doors exhibit some tutti-fruitti.

The crusher trap room after the red key was a bit dodgy, I felt. It seemed like the invulnerability you get previously is, if not mandatory, at least highly recommended, and if you're going to give the player something that negates a trap like that, why have the trap at all?

I also wasn't a big fan of the E1M4-ish skinwall area.

The over-under dropdowns were slightly uncomfortable; my immediate thought on seeing them was "will I die if I go down there?" I decided to take the plunge and found it was somewhere I had to go, so that was a winning gamble. It added an exploratory element, but they looked like something that could be traps.

Seemed a little on the easy side compared to some of the earlier levels. I got a plasma gun from a secret, but nary a Baron in sight.

Overall, liked.

K/I/S: 100% / 95% / 69%

[Capellan]

The invuln is completely superfluous to the crusher trap - that area is very easy to navigate safely because anywhere with a moving floor is automatically safe.

[Magnusblitz]

Not to mention that it's pretty easy to straferun across the whole area in one swoop, and it's clear that there's nothing to explore in there.

Looking in the editor, it seems there no way into the dark 'box' that contains a few monsters behind a small window, and it's marked as secret, so 100% secrets are impossible as well.

[Steve D]

dobu gabu maru said:

You know, I'm actually pretty surprise we have yet to see a megawad project where contributors have to use the mapping programs from the mid 90s.

Now you've done it!

They'll call it "Torture The Mappers."

Personally, I'd jump at the chance, assuming I could get my old PowerMac 9500 running so I could use Hellmaker. Reading Capellan's description of early DEU versions was enough to chill my blood. You can still run a nice, crashy Amiga version of DEU if you have either an Amiga or an emulator. It's called ADeu. As an aside, an old version of ZDoom was recently ported to Amiga. wOOt!

Hellmaker gets a lot of shade because it ran differently on every Mac -- stable on some, nightmarishly crashy on others, like mine -- but that editor was damned nice. I have especially fond memories of the 3D isometric view, which probably had a lot of influence on my tendency towards height variation, since it looked so cool in that view. The only real devastating problem with Hellmaker was its tendency to choke on and destroy really ginormous maps, as in maps with much over 1,000 sectors, sometimes just 800 sectors. But somehow, piXel Rex made Simply Evil with it, a pretty damned impressive map with over 1,500 sectors, and the little whippersnapper was only 13 when he did it.

[Capellan]

Things pretty quickly got better with DEU after they went GCC. That gave them sufficient memory to build in more features and automation. By 95 editors - while certainly a long way short of DB2 - were pretty good. Heck, I did my CC4 map with a win32 port of DETH.

[Demon of the Well]

Serenity E3M4 -- All the Marbles - 100% Kills / 69% Secrets
Not a good map. The green marble and ceramic/gravel flooring used for most of the structure is one of the better-looking asset combos that the WAD has fielded to this point, but overall I think this may actually be aesthetically the weakest level thus far. Interesting shapes are not really Serenity's forte (lots of orthogonal boxes and corridors and whatnot, mostly), so where the WAD has been most striking visually have been those places with a large scale and lots of attention to lighting (e.g. that shot that Durian posted, that really is quite classy); this level has only one room of any decent size, and lighting contrast is less noticeable (though fortunately the default light level is on the dim side, rather than the bright side). On the whole it's not so far below par with the other maps, I guess, but there are a couple of really ugly areas that drag it down (nothing as bad as E3M3's 'R' though, at least), ala the squidgy, very poorly-aligned flesh-maze, and the lack of any really visually memorable area means that it's the ugly stuff that sticks in my mind in this one.

As per usual, the level is full of little conceptual doodads--the red key/assorted goody-vending machine is probably the most articulated--and that's cute and all, but it's getting difficult for me to gloss over how persistently weak the actual action is at this point. 'Weak', hell, the gameplay here, such as it is, is atrocious...nothing but more 1-2 monster encounters in some narrow corridors, and a smattering of monsters that are always prevented from actually approaching you by something, be it a cage, a trench in the floor (brilliant idea putting demons/specters on the other side of one of those...), or one of the frustratingly ubiquitous monster-blocking lines. The latter seem to be getting more and more and pronounced as the episode goes on, unfortunately....I can only assume/hope there must be some kind of technical or tool-related excuse for this, because I have a difficult time imagining that anyone would intentionally place these to nullify the monsters in this way....even by the standards of 1994, the opposition is so weak that it hardly seems fair to deny them an opportunity to at least try to effectively attack the player. Shit, even the map's biggest fight behind the red door doesn't really work right...the cacos and souls can't fly around the room very well because they get infinitely-talled by the pointless monsters in the central pit, and the railing on the podium is too tall for the monsters on it to actually be able to fire down at the player. And then we have the maze, where maybe monsters could come to find you (with the barrels around they might even be able to troll you, if circumstances were right), but no....more of the monster-blocking lines. I really don't see the appeal here....limited tools and an unwritten rulebook might justify oversights like the unreachable secrets or decisions like the exit hidden behind an illusory wall, but they don't justify this kind of utterly gutless monster-janitoring. Not even in 1994.

Serenity E3M5 -- Dungeons of the Dark - 100% Kills / No secrets
Definitely a level of contrasts, 'Dungeons of the Dark' contains both some of the worst and some of the best material in Serenity up to this point.

The bad: The marble/skull-floor maze is inexcusable. Not because it's a maze, not because it's ugly (marble + skull-floor + bright light almost never works), but because it's full of more line-blocked monsters, many of which are pinkies and lost souls, meaning that they are 100% use-fucking-less. Don't waste my time, Nathrath! Additionally, it seems this map needed more playtesting before it hit the web, as it has a few wonky oversights, ranging from the essentially harmless (a stuck specter glued to the teleport pad that leads to the blue key room) to the gamebreaking: in the ashwall corridor that leads to the descent to the marble-ooze dungeon/maze, it's quite easy to jam one of the series of doors that's supposed to slam shut behind you as you go along with Doomguy's head; if you back up after jamming it thusly, you'll be stuck and forever unable to progress (unless this happens at the very first gate, more on that in a bit).

The good: Yet, despite some of the dross cluttering it up, there's some neat stuff in this level. I think the sudden teleport into the middle of the action in the fiery red 'N' room is genuinely cool, a real breath of fresh air (well, to the extent that brimstone can seem 'fresh') after the drudgery of the marble dungeon, and a shot in the arm on the battle front as well--I think this is the only real multidirectional threat in the mapset thus far, good use of the lost souls. Really slick how it dumps you back out at the level's entrance, too, at first I thought that little cherry-red alcove at the start was just a bit of decoration, in the vein of the little rocky slide at the start of 'Slough of Despair.' Later parts of the level also offer some more memorable stuff: the moody visuals used for the presentation of the red skull key are well-done (I particularly like the light that comes on to highlight the key itself as you reach the end of the hallway), and the shutter-gate....thing....that guards the key itself is interesting, if nothing else.

The ???: This was the first level in the WAD where going the pistol-start route seemed less than optimal, although I didn't have too rough a time. Luckily, I was able to shoot a sergeant in the initial 'zoo' area close enough to the cage bars that I was able to reach through and snag his shotgun, so my pistol-time was minimal. Ammo was quite tight early on, to the point that I punched out a few pinkies and lost souls sans 'roid-rage (this was how I discovered the possibility for breaking the map mentioned earlier), but doing so allowed me to eventually build up enough of an ammo buffer to carry me through the rest of the map, comfortably killing everything. Also, there seems to be a sequence-break in this map: you can skip the entire blue key leg by carefully leaping into the rocket launcher overlook from one of the elevated platforms leading into the upper ashwall tunnel. I wonder if the authors were aware of this? It's not hard to do, and this kind of circumvention wouldn't be out of keeping with the spirit of the WAD, so I suspect so, but it's an interesting wrinkle either way.

[Capellan]

The block monster lines are definitely an odd thing in this set -- if e3m4 had been in any way tight on the ammo front I might see something in it. "Shoot the pinkies safely but risk running out of ammo, or chainsaw them later and risk getting munched". But given the way it drowns you in shells, that doesn't fly.

e3m5
With the exception of the dull back and forth that is getting the yellow key, this is a step in the right direction. There's a nice loop back to the start, and the WAD's first real fight in the blue key room. That's a bit undermined by the next "big" ambush, which is two caged imps, but oh well. Can't have everything :)

For keyboarders, the barons beyond the red door might present some challenge. And back in 1994 there were a lot more of those poor benighted fools (I would know, I was one :) ). Otherwise though, they're more or less just a time sink. At least they aren't trapped behind a block monster line though. That's nice.

Best map so far.

[Jaws In Space]

sereNity: E3M5 - HMP, Pistol Start

I really enjoyed this map, it the best looking map so far & game play was pretty good throughout. Of course there were some things that I didn't like about the map, first of which was the small platforming section. I had trouble making the jump into the ashwall hallway, but I had no problem jumping into the curved window, but that's not the way you are supposed to go. I think I did manage to eventually get into the hallway after the 4th jump, which was really annoying because I had to keep riding the elevator back to the top just to jump my way back down. After a quick run through the ashwall hallway we come face to face with a horrible sight, non damaging acid, & in a later part of the map there is non damaging lava, this happens a lot in 1994 wads & I think it's a pretty dumb thing to do. Anyways at the end of the acid section there is a teleporter pad & a switch, I tried the teleporter first, but it appeared to not do anything, so I then hit the switch which opened up a door. Here is where I got to see the first baron on HMP difficulty, I guess I didn't realize how much easier this wad is compared to Doom until this point, heck I haven't died since map 3. So after clearing out the baron section I got the yellow key & then went to look for a way out of this part of the map, apparently you have to kill a stuck specter so that you can use a teleporter. The teleporter takes you to the N room which was my favorite section of the map, it did take me a minute to realize that you didn't have to jump on the pillar to get the blue key, but that was just me being dumb. Now that I can get past the blue door legitimately I proceed with finishing the map up. I like the room that contains the red key & how you have to get it, lots of moving parts & it looks pretty cool. The exit room is also nice it contained another baron, but since the exit switch isn't behind him I just left the level without killing him. Overall this is my favorite map so far, it was fun to play, looked nice, & the only problems were pretty minor complaints.

[Salt-Man Z]

E3M5: Dungeons of the Dark
Am I the only person who didn't like the "N" room? Yes, the combat was nice and hectic, but man I thought it was an eyesore. Also didn't help that I spent way too long trying to figure out how to straferun onto the blue key platform, before finally realizing I could just activate it to lower it. I did love how it let you out back at the start, though, that was really neat. And I really dug that initial 3-way-entry area; very cool. Lots of surprise barons in this map, not particularly difficult (even for this keyboarder, though the one paired with a caco gave me a scare) but they wound up being quite the ammo sink--even including the 7 or so rockets you can get (which I used.) I actually ran out of ammo for all of my weapons at one point or another: shells, bullets, rockets, and cells. Thankfully by the end I was able to refill at least the shells and some of the bullets.

[scifista42]

E3M6 - "I’m Here. I’m There. Stairs Are Everywhere"

So, this map was all about exploring a complex of simplistic tight corridors and rooms, textured very coherently. Those rare differing parts seemed pretty cool-looking, then, for example the key-marked doors and even the crate room. A lack of armor helped to set a higher overall difficulty, in fact I've died a few times. On the other hand, quite a few monsters were practically harmless due to obstacles and steep height differences, and the actual combat situations weren't anything special at all. Still, not a bad experience. Great "relaxing" music again, like I've said about E3M5's music too.

[Zed]

E3M5:

A big improvement in my opinion, but not without its flaws. I liked the progression, but I think some texturing is out of place, like Salt-Man Z said, the N room. It just doesn't looks good. By the way, I spent like 10 minutes the first time trying to strafe run from the top of the stairs to get the blue key, until I realized the column comes down just by activating it. Anyway, 3 deaths: First in the initial crusher, so no big deal. Second one in the red key room, another crusher. The third one was almost at the end, trying to make one of the barons hit the caco, but restarting even from there was not that bad, the level is small and relatively easy once you know what to do. Final time was 16:30, and I missed a couple of monsters. Also, no secrets, which is strange considering the last map.

[Capellan]

e3m6
Like the last, this map delivers a little more 'teeth' than the first four, though certainly nothing on the level of the red key room. That's because of the designers' continued love of narrow corridors and other choke points, which allow you to control the angles of approach. The main sources of difficulty here will be the RNG - occasionally the sergeants get off a lucky instant hit - and from time to time the steep elevations mess up the vertical auto-aim.

Texturing is coherent, and aligned to 1994 standards (i.e. not :) ). Architecture is a bit more ambitious at times than in previous levels. The exit room is actually not a bad effort.

The marking of things that are not secrets as being secrets continues. Not sure what is going on there.

[mouldy]

E3M5 - "Dungeons of the Dark"

There was a bit of ammo starvation going on in this one, after the overabundance of shells in the previous map. Maybe pistol starting wasn't such a thing back then, but wasn't too big a deal beyond pea-shooting a few pinkies, and added an extra dynamic to some of the encounters. Looks like you can skip half the map by jumping through the window of the rocket launcher room, and that might even be an intentional shortcut seeing as there aren't any secrets on the map. But I did the rest of it anyway. Got stuck in the tunnel of closing doors when I backtracked underneath one. The most interesting fight was in the N room, at least it was interesting until I realised the lava wasn't damaging. A few more corridors and rooms and traps and finally a marked exit. Barons seem to be making more of an appearance now, hopefully I wont have to shotgun them too much. There was one in the marble dungeon steadfastly guarding an empty square room for some reason. I left him to it.

[Magnusblitz]

E3M5: Dungeons of the Dark
100% kills, no map secrets

Bah, still full of things I don't really like. A lot of the indoor sections are set to 255 brightness, which is just too bright for whole rooms (especially indoor ones). Liquids which have been damaging on previous maps aren't damaging here. A teleport pad that doesn't teleport. Monsters stuck in hallways they can't traverse. The yellow key maze is terrible and full of block monster lines right next to lost souls and pinkies (rendering them useless). The texturing for the first half of the map remains gaudy (a whole section with skulls for a floor!). Annoyingly, the ledge right before the ashwall section is difficult to jump to because the ceiling over the ledge is a smidge too low. The music feels very out of place (sounds like a theme I would expect in my home starting village in a JRPG). I also can't decide if no secrets is better or worse than the non-secrets or unreachable secrets of the previous maps.

The only section I actually liked was the 'N' section, just because it actually posed a half-decent threat and forced me to react a bit instead of just firing at whatever two or three monsters happened to be around the corner. Also, I appreciated finally getting a rocket launcher (though there was no ammo for it) just because I was getting bored of shotgunning everything.

[Walter confetti]

E3M6: Tech base here, wood there, shit is everywhere.

A lower step from earlier map, this level is sets into a extremely episode 1-ish like map, with WOOD1 Textures instead of BROWNx textures and a much more rectangular layout with also a lot "non-secret" areas: just enter into a random door (not a secret one but a regular door) and you found a secret! Yeah, like an OBLIGE made map!
Also there's a passage too narrow to pass in one of the secret section:

Spoiler

In this map the exploration of every single corner is vital: i've rounded around the map for long time searching for the red keycard or a way to open the depot room door (i've shooted to that door thinking it was a GR triggered action door) before using the IDBEHOLDA cheat to see what section i've missed, and i found it after more searching in a unseen angle of a uninteresting room that i already watched 3 times before!

When you get this trick map becomes a little linear... sure there's some tricks in the yellow key room but it becomes too confuse where to go, making this map a "boring" play.

Overall lighting detail is cool (nothing like the other maps, but makes its work) and the final room is cool with that exploded portal (with red lights on the ceiling of the destroyed portal... ok...), the MIDI used is from an awesome song (Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode) altought the piano rendition used here had some whistle that plays sometimes taking out all the atmosphere and giving it a Jokewad aspect to it...

Lowest map of the episode, next!

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Capellan said:

The invuln is completely superfluous to the crusher trap - that area is very easy to navigate safely because anywhere with a moving floor is automatically safe.

I stand corrected, but still think that putting invulnerability right before a trap like that (unless flagged just for easy mode) is a bit of a questionable choice.

SERENITY.WAD E3M5

This one... really feels like any old WAD pulled at random from the 94 era. Texturing tends to be ugly, and some of the marble decorations are a bit chopped up. There are also nukage/lava flats that don't hurt... ugh. Pentagrams as a lift top were a little weird too. Attention to lighting effects continues but is starting to feel routine.

The bit where you have to dash down the pillars and into an opening was annoying. If you don't go at the corridor with the right angle and speed, you bounce off and have to ride the lift back up to try again, which happened to me about 8 times before I got it just right. There are some other traps/puzzles but nothing that stands out quite so much as some things in the previous levels. One teleporter required me to step onto the pad, then step off again to actually teleport.

There is an actual exit sign, yet I exited before I wanted to anyway because I thought the switch would get me back out of the room somehow, being as it was on the other side of the area from where the sign is.

The main thing that's going for this map over the earlier ones is that it's tougher; beefy monsters, including Barons, are starting to appear more often. My first death on this one was when I ran out of ammo and tried to get a gun off the two shotgunners behind the yellow door. I punched out one, tried to evade the other, but when I went for the gun discovered that the door had crushed it, and got killed, which was a more memorable moment than most of the stuff that's planned into the map. I'm not totally sure if everything in this map can be killed without resorting to the fist; I ended up leaving one Baron in the marble area alone after I realized he can't leave his little dead end.

I'll also give a slight nod to the loop-around design, I've always liked these (Heretic E1M2 remains one of my favorite map layouts). But, it wasn't a huge plus, especially with teleporation rather than physical interconnection.

All in all, not terrible, but my general feeling is No Sir, I didn't like it.

K/I/S: 93% / 100% / 0%

[7hm]

Wad: Serenity
Slot: 3 5
Map: Dungeons of the Dark
Author: Holger Nathrath, Bjorn Hermans
Notes:
Finally died legit. You can take an obvious sequence break and skip the blue/yellow key if you want, but by doing so ammo scarcity becomes a real problem off of a pistol start, and I died to the double baron room (which is only that if you aren't killing anything because of no ammo). This was actually an issue because you don't seem to be able to make the jump to the blue key area if you're running, you have to walk it. I'm so used to going full speed that it took me a shocking number of tries to figure this out.

So I retried the map and did it the proper way. Ammo scarcity is still an issue at points, but I had enough to kill everything in the end. Had to plink down a couple cacos with a pistol though, and killing barons with shotguns isn't really much fun either. OG Doom everybody. Other thoughts: the sun burns you, but nukage and lava don't; the spectre stuck in the teleport after you get the yellow key had me questioning if the map was broken (when I didn't notice it but couldn't move into the teleport), I really enjoyed the red key area.

On a continuous playthrough I just burned through it skipping the blue key area. It was a lot easier.

One thing to note: Twin Peaks! Fuck yeah! Once I heard the music I paused the TV show I had up on the other monitor so that I could listen to it as I played through. It doesn't fit the wad at all but I love it, so whatever.

Wad: Serenity
Slot: 3 6
Map: I'm Here. I'm There. Stairs Are Everywhere
Author: Holger Nathrath, Bjorn Hermans
Notes:
I bounced off this map on several pistol start playthroughs, and finally decided to come back to it with a continuous run. I beat it on my first try on continuous. It's a really stingy map from pistol start with a lot of tight spaces and corridor fighting. No big bads, I think the toughest monster is a cacodemon, but they're pretty constant. I actually quite liked it. I found the mild puzzling to be a cute little distraction - I did have to make a second loop through the map before I figured out how to access the yellow door. durr.

[Jaws In Space]

serenIty: E3M6 - HMP, Pistol Start

I have mixed feeling about this map, it's biggest fault it that the entire map is essentially nothing but mono textured hallways. Still the map has good use of height variation & the way the map wraps around itself provides for a somewhat interesting layout, even though it it nothing but hallways. The combination of tight corners, heavy use of hit scanners, & relatively tight health caused me one death on this map. Other than that there really isn't much to say about, it was an okay map.