The DWmegawad Club plays: 50 Shades of Graytall & Erkattäññe

[Naan]

@Gez: Thanks for the details about secrets, I completely missed the plasma gun one, very clever. I liked how the secrets were handled in this map with the star symbol next to secrets and new yellowish starry skybox on teleporters in them, mostly on the optional zone.


MAP08 - "At the Mountains of Madness” by mouldy - UVMax-ish with like 7-8 saves and deaths

This is to me some kind of a "soft" slaughterfest map in the sense there is plenty of space and cover to maneuver to take down enemy hordes throwed on your face. There were nothing unfair and as others noted, if you are careful enough you can control how and when monsters comes into play. The power plant section was obviously a bit harder but still manageable once you know what to do - archviles, then cyberdemon, then clear out the rest.

I assume the 2 monsters left before I exit the map were missed teleport triggers, and I almost got the secret by accident while dodging revenants' rockets and I have no clue of what was inside it, heh. Also liked the escape tunnel trick even if I think it actually makes things harder by giving more time to archviles to resurrect stuff.

And I think this is the sweetest map in terms of design within the project's limitations so far along with MAP05. The gemstone cavern environment slowly revealing itself during play and the cloudy sky moving you can see from the entrance, the pile of corpse in the center, the clever use (or non-use!) of the GREYTALL red stripe, the general level of detail in the powerplant... Assuredly one of the mapset's better efforts.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 08 -- At the Mountains of Madness - 121% Kills / 100% Secrets
This is Mouldy doing what he does best, supplying a raucous freefrom slugfest in a more or less representational setting that somehow, someway, manages to be eminently traversable with a patently gameplay-focused layout in spite of the aesthetic slant towards realism, strange bedfellows in Doom mapping (and stranger and more impressive still given the project's texture restrictions!). Is this is a slaughtermap? I don't quite think so, personally--partially because it's the sort of thing you can potentially survive with absolutely no planning on twitch skill and instinct alone, partially because there's relatively little sense of true 'area denial' at play, and partially because it's very possible to take all of the combat in very manageable little chunks without having to metagame/exploit the encounter triggers--though I'd not argue for a moment against the notion that it's in a sort of grey area as far as that goes (as so many maps that I really like seem to be, incidentally!). Mouldy's signature style of action is something I'd liken to the inevitable barfight scene in comedy-leaning old Western films, or perhaps to similar 'tea house' scenes in comedy-leaning chop-socky kung fu flicks: things start small, but a complex web of complimentary triggers and tantalizing goodies spread out in easy-to-spot locations is purpose-built to see things escalate to the level of mass hysteria in an eyeblink, so that what starts as a little bit of pushing and shoving soon sees half the county crammed into one saloon in a bloody battle royale of all against all, sans any real rhyme or reason. Given the heavy focus on making the layouts monster-friendly (in the sense that care is taken to see that they can move nearly as freely as you can), things are often so chaotic in these scenarios that soaking some damage is totally inevitable, but mouldy generally opts to supply the player with plentiful healing items, tons of ammo, and a few juicy powerups to keep things fast, loose, and almost totally impromptu--as long as you focus enough to avoid getting totally cornered, you have an excellent chance at victory in the vast majority of his fights, though given their unpredictable and highly plastic nature you will occasionally also find yourself in a scenario that's almost comedically lethal/untenable, but this is something I see as part of the fun.

That didn't happen to me here, though, was able to tear through it without too much trouble. In comparison to most of the maps in his seminal work Going Down, there's a little more movement space at hand here, particularly in the first cavernous area, that you really only risk getting cornered if you stop and stand still for way too long. Having played many maps by mouldy prior to this, I was of course fully expecting the web of triggers set up to turn the whole area into a clusterfuck; I enjoy playing that way, and so happily dove right in without hesitation. However, players who prefer a more methodical pace will find that they can readily take the action in discrete stages using basic clear/fallback techniques if desired, changing the nature of the action from one big unruly hotbed fight to a series of small squad skirmishes, as most of the triggers are quite obvious (arranged around weapons or upon switchpresses, etc.). Things ramp up a bit in the research base in the second half, as space is harder to come by relative to the degree of monster density on display, which abates not one whit from what it was outside (that's another thing I really like about mouldy's maps, incidentally, they just keep ramping up 'til the end, sometimes against all apparent odds). The triggers are also a little more inscrutable in here (I also don't really know what causes the first ring around the core to open), and the hordes tend to materialize right next to you, rather than at a distance as was the case outside, and consciously trying to spring everything at once is probably significantly less survivable as a result (which I didn't do, because I missed the switches upstairs at first). The cyberdemon is an expected capper, although he didn't participate as much as he might've, again because I didn't see the second switch to lower him to the floor until after he was already dead. He does represent a strong deterrent to just trying to hole up upstairs, at least. The secret 'zerk pack was a strange choice given the free one outside, almost think that ought to be a soulsphere or something instead. Nevertheless, fun fun fun this map. Some folks like to characterize leisurely-paced oldschool fare as 'Doom comfort food'; I reckon maps like this fit the bill just as well, albeit in a totally different way. Apple pie and chili con carne!

I said of 'The Alfonzone' earlier that I appreciated its totally abstract/impressionistic approach to texture use, focusing on looking good through interesting angles and basic visual contrast. I reckon 'At the Mountains of Madness' looks just as good, while taking the totally opposite tack to texture use, with each of the few textures available used as rough, approximate substitutes for real materials, e.g. GRAYTALL (sans stripe) for ice and stone, FIREBLU for eldritch mineral deposits (the use of astral skyfloor on their upper surfaces is a brilliantly convenient conceit here), GRAYTALL again (this time with stripe) for the base (which, if we follow the Lovecraftian narrative, is actually a tent of sorts) and its weird googy-period red supports, and a gray pebble flat to represent, uh....gray pebbles. The overall presentation is at once heavily (and necessarily) stylized, but also quite believable in that ephemeral idtech1 way, with touches of the author's trademark sense of humor (e.g. the hyper-scrolling FIREBLU panels inside the research area) for accent. None of this should come as a surprise given the author's penchant for putting stock textures to novel uses, but it certainly is cool that halfway in 50 Shades has already offered us nifty visual presentations from both ends of the abstract/representational spectrum.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP09: The Killing Fields
100% kills, no map secrets

I expected to hate this map (or at least DNF it) but as slaughtermaps go (and yes, I'd consider this as such, since it's really not about paying attention to the types of enemies but instead just circle strafing around huge masses of monsters and firing rockets/BFG ammo at it while picking up more boxes littered around the edge) this is a pretty easy one. Certainly didn't think so upon loading it up, but it's actually fairly lightly populated at the start, and the large monster count belies a pretty easy going. Arch-Viles are left in specific spots where they can't chase the player and strike from safety, cyberdemons are mixed in with everything else to help the player wipe out the hordes, and the mancubi snipers end up hitting their own allies and distracting enemies for the player. The most difficult thing for me was remembering where the blue switch was after killing everything!

As the design goes, yes, pretty spartan - lots of 90/45 degree angles, with the main building being a fairly benign GRAYTALL use with some DOORTRAK as trim and FIREBLU used as the outside 'rock' texture. More just for contrast than anything else (and the dim lighting inside helps a lot). The switches being lowering FIREBLU columns is a nice choice, though.

[scifista42]

MAP09 - “The Killing Fields” by Joshy

I liked this slightly more than mouldy's map, probably thanks to being less chaotic and more (efficiently) organized, with lesser probability of random deaths and greater possibility to outmaneuver projectiles and monster bodies, and being more generous with powerup pickups. But I've played it continuously, so that I had the BFG with me. Also, the final parts still required me to abuse saves/loads and play trial-and-error, and I didn't really want to spend time killing all of the monsters. So, not the kind of a map I would truly and fully enjoy, again.

[baja blast rd.]

Map10: "Big Dwayne’s Orbital Concrete and Propane Emporium"

We get the computer area map for free early on. Vanity? You can consider it that -- the level looks sexy on the automap, and Mechadon knows it -- but huge, intricate maps need landmarks, for ease of navigation, and how exactly do you build those, with so few textures to work with. This was the first time in a while I was tempted to use the automap's tagging feature, but I spent only about 15 minutes of my 1:43 playthrough lost, and I've spent more time lost in shorter levels than that, so I'll consider this a win.

This is one of those maps that mixes incidental combat, traps, and set pieces, with a heavy leaning towards the first two in terms of frequency, but the latter being generally the most memorable. Big Dwayne's Emporium has an elaborate, multilayered layout, with overlooks looking out of overlooks, and in fact, the bulk of the combat is all about positioning. When a trap is sprung, you back up and identify the best place to hole up, and let the ammo fly. AVs are sprinkled in everything -- I had a seemingly hairy moment early on where one or two got loose and rezzed about 70 rockets worth of monsters (there was so much ammo, it turned out, that this wasn't a big deal). But it's cacodemons, caco clusters, that are Mechadon's signature tool. They aren't particularly threatening at this point (more on that, later ;)), but they simply look cool, swarming over the gray topography.

I botched an early set piece (or pair of set pieces) in a way that made it by far the most exhilarating Doom experience of the year for me. In that circular room with a SSG, lots of monsters warp in and an AV stands on the pedestal above. I took some damage here and was feeling lots of pressure so I left as soon as I could leave -- straight into the crossfire hell of the spider and manc room, with the AV still alive . . . So I had to circle around that room's lone obstacle really quickly as the AV occasionally tried to light me up and there were cacodemons and my heart was pounding and omg a manc fireball and omg a plasma volley gotta dodge that NO I'M ON FIRE . . . I somehow got through that mess alive.

The penultimate battle. Okay, I somehow overlooked the BFG! So I ended up stocking up on rockets and quickly holing up on one of the sides, out of reach of the cyber and far out of reach of the AVs. This is where those cacos got threatening! "Hey buddy, you're not supposed to be here", they yelled in their infinitely tall way, as they swarmed and tried to extricate me, and a few revs wandered in too, and I was down to my bare fist with 100% health (courtesy of medkits) and 0% armor. Luckily by the time I had gotten rid of them, the worst was over, and meanwhile an incredibly patient archvile had kindly gotten rid of a cyber for me, so I plasma'd out the other cyber and found the BFG and shook my mouse and dealt with the last perfunctory opposition.

[Budoka]

MAP10: Big Dwayne’s Orbital Concrete and Propane Emporium by Mechadon

Who the hell is Big Dwayne? Anyway, as it happens, this is my first encounter with Mechadon. Things could have been different had I gotten further in Back to Saturn X, but since I’ve decided to wait for the full release, here we are (by the way, the wait is really starting to get long as far as that’s concerned). Speaking of which, this level does remind me a lot of BTSX in terms of both structure and enemy encounters.

It’s also quite the daunting adventure. At the time at which I took a break in order to start writing this, it seems there are four to six keys total. I really like the semi –linear progression style Mechadon went for here. After the first couple of encounters (which are surprisingly low-key considering what we just went through), you can tackle the various areas in any order you want, and even how many you awaken at a time, with the caveat that some specific rooms must be cleared before others are available. It seems like you can even chose where you first pick up most of the weapons, although in every case they’ll be heavily guarded (that first Super Shotgun in particular…).

Also, great use of Cacos and Archviles so far, though I’ve seen a lot more vicious. Well, this map is more about exploration and reasonably tough combat that total brutality like some of the previous ones were, so it all works pretty well. So it’s a good thing that the visuals are good (on par with MAP06/MAP09), and that the ethereal electronic soundtrack sets the perfect mood for this.

Six keys it is then. I was wondering if it would be just four to go along with the FIREBLU1 theme, but I guess we’re going all the way. One would think the next map would be the really big one, as it is the E1 finale.

Anyway, I like the way this slowly becomes one giant open-ended structure, as well as how the height of some places can be modified for navigation purposes, and how some walls (actual walls, not doors) can open, close and reopen at the player’s will. It’s all really neat, if slightly disorienting. I must admit I underestimated the architectural prowess of this map, both because of the aforementioned tricks and because the area that hosts the two yellow keys looks absolutely amazing, way better than even Mouldy’s level. Also, the use of sky transfers to signify which key switch is what, is the most elaborate use of the technique we’ve seen yet. This is all quite astounding, and I’m impressed that Mechadon didn’t permanently confuse himself trying to build it.

Fittingly and satisfyingly, as you push the yellow switches, you get the one mega-slaughter wave of the map as your ultimate challenge… never mind, slaughter WAVES, three to be exact (and for some reason a pack of Revenants). Yeesh, this map may just as well be its own Pwad. Honestly, I’m not sure which of the last three maps I like the most. They’re all so different, yet so incredibly satisfying in their own way… actually, this one is probably the best, as it is the best-looking, and by far the longest without ever becoming boring. I guess the hype around it just had me expect something even more impressive, but this is more than enough (especially once the final section comes into play). I pity whoever will try to UV-Max this (which is to say, in actual demo format), but then again people do that with Eternal Doom, so…

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP10 Big Dwayne's Orbital Concrete and Propane Emporium

eat your heart out, haters.

my fellow Virginian has this monstrosity of a Graytall exposition that is the most fun of the maps here. yes, even though it's sheltered between slaughterfests, it's worth playing. a load of stuff, a load of setpieces, yet loads of fun. And that's what matters. I really couldn't say all the things that were cool in one post. How about that western section? I don't like the revenant towers however, they're hard to hit up there with rockets, but everything else was cool.

[scifista42]

MAP10 - "Big Dwayne’s Orbital Concrete and Propane Emporium” by Mechadon

My only gripe are the sky-transferred non-sky textures used as switches and door trims, it looks freakingly ugly to me, even though I got somewhat used to it by the end of the map.

Otherwise, pure awesomeness. The architecture seemed both chaotic and organized in a perfect ratio to make me find the map really entertaining just to navigate around (and that's not even mentioning hunting for secrets - I particularly liked the plasma gun secret accessible through a chimney shaft, somewhat hidden in plain sight). Gameplay was full of fun moments, which very well escalated to a climax at the end. Suddenly I thought the slaughter battle worked great for this map's finale, it also allowed to be handled safely only at the cost of prolonged time, but I had to keep moving at all times anyway. Excellent piece of work!

[Naan]

MAP09 - “The Killing Fields” by Joshy - UVMax with an obsene amount of saves and deaths

If previous map was free of unfairness and frustrating moments, this map is full of them, with next to nowhere to get cover, damaging skybox floor so you are taking damage anyway while avoiding revenants' aiming shots without being able to circle around due to the bottlenecked outdoor stair, so you have to resort to out of the box ways to handle monster waves.

The first archvile that popped on the center was frustrating to deal with, has to resort chaingunning him from one of the platforms next to a column to hide from his flames. I somehow easily resolved the red key fight by running back to the building taking down the leftover barons while the cyberdemon wipes out most of the imps and revenants outside. And after many unfructuous strategies and tries, I found a pretty unorthodox way to handle the last blue key fight: wait for the archvile slow lift to be available before jumping out of the platform, stand in the dark corner for a while because lost souls from pain elementals can't get you from there thanks to some blocking line, take down a couple dozen of revenants coming from the lift, then when you are out of cells, blow out all the souls and elementals, take any ammo left and hop in the outside clearing off all mancubi, and finish the job taking down cybies and resurrected barons.

Unlike scifista42 and Magnusblitz, I liked much more how the previous map played out, I had to do many trial and error finding the right move for each fight and executing it well. Oh, and before finally nailing the final fight, I tried to retry the map on HMP and HNTR only to discover difficulty settings were not supported for this map. Oh, well...

There is no much to say about design within the limits, as it was pretty cubic and straightforward, not overloaded with detail and texture trimming. I liked the FIREBLU big buttons to push on the floor, but i took a little time to figure out the red and blue keys are actually opening the two DOORTRAK columns.

So finally it seems there are different schools of slaughter mapping design, I see why people prefering Joshy's take more than mouldy's, but for me, at least for now, I'm on the latter's wagon.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP10: Ah, the pièce de résistance! Mechadon’s GRAYTALL odyssey is a beautiful journey through an elaborate complex filled with interwoven paths and bloodthirsty monsters. It’s definitely the most impressive map in the set, but I feel a bit… torn on it. It’s great—don’t get me wrong—but I feel like Mech’s stuff benefits so much more from his wider texture selection. Stuck between three choices here, 3/4ths of the map feel very samey and it can be easy to get lost running around this behemoth. The fights here are constructed well but I always appreciate the design & atmosphere in Mech’s stuff over the gameplay, so to handicap the visuals is unfortunate. He definitely pulls a lot out of these three textures, but his BTSX stuff is far livelier than this.

Still, absolutely superb work here; unarguably the most impressive map of the set!

[Demon of the Well]

Map 09 -- The Killing Fields - 110% Kills / No secrets
Haha, yes, not much grey area here (helluva lot of GRAY area, though!!), this one is certainly a slaughtermap, which surprises precisely no one at this point, I'm sure. I would agree with rdwpa and Magnusblitz, the bark is certainly worse than the bite on this one, perhaps some high intimidation factor at play (mostly in the final fight), but in practice for the most part the massacre is quite manageable, given a wealth of movement space, an adequate powerup supply, and more premium ammo than even the poorest marksman could ever need to clean house. The pacing is perhaps a bit deceptive, and the map ended up being much, much shorter than I had initially thought, as killing the first 10% of the monsters takes about half of the total runtime, with the last 500 casualties or so all happening in the span of 4-5 minutes.

The early going is in a somewhat oldschool ZoI slaughter vein, with lots of 'occupation forces' staged as fixed artillery to fire upon no man's land while yourself and a few unlucky demonic grunts scramble and scamper about trying to sort things out, but as soon as you clear yourself a little corner to work from (most likely one of the chaingunner hangouts in the northerly backroom area) you can take advantage of cover and vantage to dispatch everything that remains entirely at your leisure. The 2nd and 3rd battles are in a more modern style, the second featuring a heterogeneous torrent of free-roamers over open ground (easy to handle, just cut back through them straight up the void channel, and let cybie + general infighting do the rest), and the third featuring a more pronounced sense of area denial back in the starting building. The natural approach to the last bit is to retreat back outside and choke everything off at the threshold until most of the viles inside/in the midst of the chaos are dead, and given the heavy collateral the enemy suffers from the last pair of cybs this works just fine (the mancs + specters are not insistent enough in volume to be gamechanging distractions, I found). It's more tense, but you can also fight from inside fairly effectively if you use the BFG well enough, and with some foreknowledge you can pretty handily defang the situation by bumrushing the arch-viles in the western phalanx with the BFG (although you still have to make one more cut back through the mob to go hit the blue switch). I did manage to die once in this last part, but I don't feel too bad about this one, I guess...I was caught out by an unexpected invisible teleport line just past the megasphere on the BFG ledge, which dumped me onto the BK pedestal at a really, really, REALLY bad time. In the absence of any visual signifier that the teleport line exists, I had thought the intention was to straferun from the ledge to land on the key pedestal (which is no great feat), and so was caught totally flatfooted when I went back up there to refuel and promptly found myself in the epicenter of the shitstorm all of a sudden. Ah, well. Sometimes shit just happens, y'know?

Edit: Oh, and I was vaguely disappointed that all of those chaingunners right behind player at the start promptly blowing themselves up was not primarily for comedic effect, heh.

The visual presentation on offer here is certainly palatable, but perhaps not amongst the most striking we've seen thus far in the set. The texture scheme is functionally identical to the one from 'The Gray, The Blu, and the Trakly' from earlier on (e.g. a GRAYTALL techbase with dootrack trim, FIREBLU used in big swaths for 'natural terrain', etc.); I guess some repetition of visual themes was inevitable given how limited the toolset here was, of course. The architecture is very much Resurgence-era Joshy, e.g. tall, spacious, airy, squarejawed, perhaps slightly overscaled in places, the works. It's a very clean-looking level (daffy FIREBLU landscape notwithstanding) with sensible lighting choices, although its simplistic layout (maybe a speedmap?) in concert with the limited texture selection does mean it ends up looking mainly like an essentially generic play area, rather than being evocative of anything in particular. Joshy's current visual style tends to rely a lot on rich color combos and a certain depth of field in vista and the like, and neither one of those things is present in great degree here, perhaps understandably so, but to be honest between this and the somewhat rough gameplay I reckon it's not a particularly strong map by the generally high standards of his work.

[Lingyan203]

I might as well join in on this as I've started my video playthrough already for 50 shades of Graytall. So far I have the first 5 levels completed. Check them out here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgS1ZoidySwNqWAzmP8BrSayb_GoyNRXn

Right now I'm on level 6.

[baja blast rd.]

Map11: "Stardust Mayhem"

Not a big fan of this one, because I don't like this particular type of BFG spam map. I tend to like the ones in the arcady mold -- Lunatic's finale, for instance, which eventually becomes this. Increasingly strong waves of baddies swarm you, and you have to make a stand against all odds and get rid of dozens of them a minute or be overhwlemed. The common thread is the persistent feeling of danger. During an encounter, you never really feel like you are in the clear until it ends. The next moment just might be the one where you eat a rocket, or get surrounded, or get hit by a fatal cluster of fireballs.

"Stardust Mayhem" has only two encounters that really engender this feeling: the carving out of space at the start, and the ninja AV warp-in accompanying the decoy demon horde. The start encounter isn't anywhere near as tense as it can be, simply because it's at the start. The costs of failure as I tried to figure out a strategy were quite low -- a minute or so of time at most, and then a reset. The layout isn't as open as the start view might have you feel, so it's somewhat easy to hide from the cybers' rockets once you've cleared one of the wings; and there's so much cell ammo that the player can afford to waste several BFG shots getting rid of each of them. The first mass invasion -- cacos, pain elementals, hell knights, some other things I might be forgetting -- simply didn't exert much pressure. The semi-closed layout made it easy to hole up and hold down fire as mobs approached from one direction. There weren't many warp-in points, so I got rid of what felt like half of the monsters as they were teleporting in.

The layout is very utilitarian, but visually, "Stardust Mayhem" has some nice flourishes here and there -- like the cross symbol, the triangular arches, the various terraces. The map has two secret invulnerability spheres I didn't find during my playthrough. These should allow a very hyperaggressive approach, I guess. If I replay it I'll try it out.

[Budoka]

MAP11: Stardust Mayhem by Breezeep and Mouldy

Bloody hell, what is this. Damn you Sunder! The demo doesn’t help, huh. I have no idea how I’m going to tackle this one. I guess you have to keep running while killing everything and get to the various Megashperes in time? Even THAT’s pretty damn hard though…

At least until I read KMX’s tip about how there are Invulnerabilities hidden behind the Megaspheres. Once you factor that in, this map becomes a giant BFG spamfest more akin to Erik Alm’s “Fear” than anything out of Sunder. It’s still reasonably challenging and thoroughly cathartic, and I like that you have to constantly manage at least two different fronts. But this is a lot less spectacular than I would have expected from the episode finale (which it is as demonstrated by the death exit), it’s nothing as imposing as Mechadon’s previous map and, since we’re talking MAP11 BFG slaughters, it’s certainly no Twi-Lite Massacre. Admittedly, I just let the last wave of Revenants space out a little and then bid it farewell, but that’s not much of a difference.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this for what it was, and I do consider it a more involved experience than, say, anything prior to MAP06. Turns out I’m still on UV, but maybe not for much longer (except yes, because HMP turns out not to help) as my Ribbiks baptism of fire is about to happen. Well, I screwed around with Sunlust a couple times, but I wasn’t really *playing* it. I could have settled for something more reasonable like Stardate 20X6, but no, The Cake Way it is. I have no idea what to expect, but it’s probably going to be very mean (it was, but more on that tomorrow).

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP11 Stardust Mayhem

the third-or-so slaughtermap is a cramped one with enemies fucking everywhere. what makes this easy, and potentially boring since you'll be using the BFG throughout as well, are the invulnerabilities, which means there's plenty of room for error if you know where all of them are and play aggressively while your vision is white. I'll give this collab this, very speedrun-friendly, but it's not as good as MAP08-09.

[TheOrganGrinder]

Little bit behind due to other commitments, let's see what I've been missing...

MAP09: The Killing Fields

Ferocious large-scale slaughter that can be broken down into two distinct arenas in layout and three distinct encounters in flow. The middle encounter seems the largest in its sheer numbers, but the first and last claimed more pelts from me, the first due to my failure to adjust quickly enough to the expectations of the map, and the last due to a few attempts to be clever that backfired spectacularly. I think the intersection of this style of gameplay and the limited texture set produces a crucible effect where the distractions of environmental detail fall away to leave a pure nugget of refined slaughter action; it's not, however, my favourite style of gameplay by a long shot so I'm not particularly well positioned to fully appreciate this one.

MAP10: Big Dwayne's Orbital Concrete and Propane Emporium

Best name of the WAD so far, right there. And another truly substantial monster count. This one also makes the bold move of handing the player a computer area map right away, revealing the epic scale of the map right from the start, though it looks complicated enough that I'm not sure witnessing its scope like that provides too much of an advantage. In stark contrast to the frantic metal of the previous map, the soundtrack here is electronic, dreamy, reminiscent of the softer moments of the Unreal series, fitting the slightly surreal space-platform/factory environment well. The level itself is certainly the grandest in scope that the WAD has thus far offered, big and sprawling and complex in all the best ways.

As was the case with MAP06, I think it's especially challenging to design an intricate level when faced with such a limited texture said because it denies the level author one of the biggest tools for distinguishing one area from the next, i.e. distinctive and varied texturing, and means the map must depend more heavily on other aspects of design and architecture to create landmarks and memorable areas to aid in navigation. To its credit, this map manages just that; its ever-changing landscape always feels epic but seldom feels confusing, with shape and scale used expertly to break the whole down into more readily (though not necessarily easily) confronted chunks that all interconnect well. It's a stark contrast to the similarly epic but much more straightforward slaughter of the preceding two maps, though towards the end, Big Dwayne sets subtlety aside and breaks out the monster hordes for some large-scale warfare. I enjoyed this one a great deal, though it's left me feeling quite exhausted; I didn't have the patience to fill out my kill count, nor to establish whether it was possible to backtrack and search for secrets (I found zero of six).

[Magnusblitz]

MAP10: Big Dwayne's Orbital Concrete and Propane Emporium
99% kills, 1/6 secrets

Yup, only 99%, as I finished at 910/911 monsters. Seems one was tucked away in a soulsphere secret I couldn't figure out how to access, ah well.

So yeah, at 900+ monsters, I was worried this would be another slaughtermap, but thankfully it's not, just a huge, sprawling monstrosity of a map. I think this map is a really a testament to how important layout and lighting can be, as it's quite wonderful to move through and fight in, with both large spaces and cramped hallways. It does this despite the ugly textures, which it uses pretty standard for this WAD - blocks of GRAYTALL, FIREBLU and red stripes used to break it up and create contrast, DOORTRAK blocks here and there for more contrast as well. If anything it's actually quite blocky and simplistic (almost feels like something made out of three colors of Lego) but because the layout is so nice and the architecture helps it flow, it works wonderfully. Like some others, I also wasn't a fan of the HOM effects used for the key indicators, or the switches, but it gets the job done and helps things stand out (especially considering a lot of doors/lifts easily go unnoticed since they blend in with everything else).

The fights are also well done, with a good mix between "come across enemies" and setpieces, and the level constantly shifting to open up new areas or re-arrange old ones helps keep things lively. Of course, it finishes with a slaughtery-type finale, though nothing too tough (and if anything, some of it is a bit banal, such as the pinkie/baron wave). I really like how it's rare for everything to just warp in at once, instead having groups slowly trickle in a bit at a time, giving the player a chance to establish a foothold and ramp things up. This map would certainly benefit from some extra textures (if only to help differentiate the areas of the map and make it a bit clearer to navigate) but this is truly a spectacular map by any merits.

[Gez]

TheOrganGrinder said:

the soundtrack here is electronic, dreamy, reminiscent of the softer moments of the Unreal series

That's exactly what it is.

Spoiler

[Magnusblitz]

Yeah I always love that Unreal music. May have colored my perceptions of last map just a bit. :)

MAP11: Stardust Mayhem
100% kills, 2/2 secrets

And right when David Bowie died too...

Anyways, this is the sort of map I imagine when I think of slaughtermap styles I don't like. This is actually a fairly short one, and therefore not too difficult once you get the momentum going (and/or find the secret invulnerability spheres) but it's pretty monotonous. People would criticize Pyros in TF2 as just being braindead "W+M1" types (just hold down forward and fire buttons!) and that's what playing this map feels like, except with a BFG instead of a flamethrower. Heck, there's not even any other weapons provided except the chaingun (and even this feel like it's just there in case a chaingunner drops his weapon too close to the ledge and you accidentally swap-on-pickup).

At least there's a couple cool architectural details... the ceilings are interesting, and I really like how the yellow key portal turned out.

[baja blast rd.]

Map12: "The Cake Way"

There's no easy way or hard way. There's only the cake way. Is anyone hungry? Confectionaries aside, this is a somewhat familiar Ribbiks map from a combat perspective. Apart from the four-vile and baron-chaingunner skirmishes, I came away from these encounters feeling like I've seen them in the past, with small variations. A few stages of single-plane two- or three-pronged claustrophobia with the usual suspects, and 'ol reliable: the cyber-helmed slaughter bout. But here's the thing . . . generic Ribbiks is still fun Ribbiks. So in a map this short, I don't really have any big complaints. Most of the encounters aren't tough, yet are still dynamic and fun. The centerpiece can be a nightmare, however. Even with the birthday candles (who turned 24?), this is a dark piece of red velvet cake indeed, and those cyber rockets are impossible to track in the powdered night.

The layout both is and isn't something I've seen from Ribbiks before. Sure, it's a crumpety platform suspended in an abyss amidst various diorama pieces (a trio of giant astral buttplugs). But unlike his usual one-and-done arena progression, this map wrings every inch of mileage out of its tiny layout. Almost every single surface plays host to two battles. Progression is an artful and somewhat cute double-loop. Keyless, too.* The layout might look simple -- and it is -- but try outlining one of these platform maps in the editor, or even on a sheet of paper. Chances are it won't look anywhere as pretty as this in its simplicity.

Here's a casual max of "The Cake Way".


*As an aside, I think keys are somewhat overused as McGuffins, so anytime a map can convincing eschew the usual key-colored means of progression somehow -- whether by alternative McGuffins (armor helmets?!), or by organic trigger-based progression as in this map -- it should strongly consider doing so. Easy enough in a tiny map. Potentially fraught with difficulty in larger maps. What are some notable large maps (or larger medium-sized) that do this?

[Magnusblitz]

rdwpa said:

*As an aside, I think keys are somewhat overused as McGuffins, so anytime a map can convincing eschew the usual key-colored means of progression somehow -- whether by alternative McGuffins (armor helmets?!), or by organic trigger-based progression as in this map -- it should strongly consider doing so. Easy enough in a tiny map. Potentially fraught with difficulty in larger maps. What are some notable large maps (or larger medium-sized) that do this?

I always think of Epic 2's MAP28: Ogdoad - while it has keys, it requires the player to find all the skull switches to finish the level.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP11: Oh my. I wasn’t expecting a map like this considering the two authors that are attached to it (also is that A Small Desire's Starry Sky midi? The wonky intro is uncannily similar.) Besides the hectic intro it’s a pretty well-paced slaughtermap, having a generally good flow through the area and some mindless BFG action. I like the visuals around the arena—some intricate work here and solid use of lighting—but I was more enthralled with MAP08 than this one. Nevertheless, it’s a bloody good time that sates the basest urge for carnage.

[Budoka]

MAP12: The Cake Way by Ribbiks

Just as I feared, this is exactly as brutal – and obscure – as Ribbiks’s solo material and his work with Dannebuinga. Well, except for how this map also factors in invisible walls apparently. I made it all the way to the first switch and Supercharge (with the Cacos), but beyond that point I really don’t understand anything. I see more floating candles and an Archvile, but I have no idea how to reach that. At any rate, this, much like Swim With the Whales or Sunlust, looks quite… otherworldly and immersive, probably more so than either MAP08 or MAP10. It really is quite impressive.

Oh I see, the switch also lowers the way forward. Only after reaching the backpack did it occur to me that killing the enemies like I normally do might be kind of… necessary. That in itself seems feasible, but certainly not easy. After a few tries, I’ve pacified the start area and reached the backpack and Plasma Gun. Little did I know, that’s when all hell truly breaks loose. A Tiny area, Hellknights and Revenants spawning all over the place, a Cyberdemon, and a bunch of pillars in my way? Nonsense, I tell ya.

Well, I beat the fight, but I have barely any health or ammo left and absolutely no chance against those Archviles. Yeah, I’m going to do this particular map on HMP… if not necessarily the ones after that. Nevermind, it’s the exact same. I hate to do this, but… time for God Mode. I certainly hope I won’t have to do this with the later maps, because if so, it would only be fair of me to drop this one like I did Resurgence.

So, only one more encounter after that, huh? Well it’s short at least. Short, great-looking, and probably fair to much better players than me. The key is to do way better than I am doing at the Cyberdemon fight. Maybe I can do that, but maybe not. I’ll give it a few more tries. …I had to leave the last four Barons alive, but I did it after all. So yeah, pretty cool map, but Joshy and Mechadon’s style are more my thing…

[Surreily]

NOTE: Several of the remaining maps contain slaughter gameplay which I do not like, and situations that I find extremely unfair on the player. I am going to complain about them. Please remember that this is my opinion, so if I say I don't like something, it's only my opinion, and I believe I am entitled to express my feelings about the maps here. Please don't take it too personally, there are plenty of people who do enjoy this stuff, I'm just not one of them :) Thank you.

MAP08: At the Mountains of Madness
Mouldy's map is damn good. It looks brilliant and has slaughter-style gameplay that isn't "good luck lol" levels of difficult (which, unfortunately, we will be seeing later in this WAD). I loved the first cave area - monsters are constantly popping up, but the player is given more than enough ammunition and health to deal with it, and there are no dead-ends to become trapped in. The second area is harder - we get trapped inside some building with all sorts of nasties. The very last part was a bit unfair in my opinion though. Good map overall.

MAP09: The Killing Fields
Sorry, but I hate these kinds of maps. Big arenas with way too many monsters are not my cup of tea unfortunately. I know there are people out there that enjoy this, but I am not one of them. There are two areas, lots of pain elementals, revenants, and arch-viles to deal with, and very little health.

MAP10: Big Dwayne’s Orbital Concrete and Propane Emporium
900 monsters, and very little slaughter gameplay - thank you! This is basically Eternal Doom levels of huge, with lots of places to explore and a non-linear progression. I love these kinds of maps, even if it was challenging at the beginning due to a lack of ammunition (much like a few of the other maps here). The ending takes place in a huge arena, but even here it never quite reaches slaughtermap levels. There's loads of height variation to keep things interesting, and the visuals are done well too.

Several of the encounters stand out for me (aside from the final ones): the revenant trap room, the two arch-viles teleporting in during a tight hallway section, and the beginning of the map in general were all fun challenges. Overall, this map does what I want to see from a Doom map: exploration, discovery, non-linearity, and a consistent difficulty. Best one so far (even if it did go on a little too long).

MAP11: Stardust Mayhem
Wow.

MAP12: The Cake Way
Oh look, another very difficult map! The player has to make two circuits around the map to succeed, and ammo is extremely tight - I had to reload an earlier save to finish it after I got stuck on the chaingunners. The area at the start (second time around) was also a pain due to the pillars. It does look damn nice though, I will give it that.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP12 The Cake Way

The stealth approach was something I thought of in this map, but when it's cramped like this I can't find any good strategy. Ribbiks made this map not flawless, but flawless-proof with spaces like this. I'm still not sure how to play it, but it manages to be harder than any of the other maps so far. also those "switches" are hard to figure out.

On the subject of the soundtrack, have we figured out MAP07's song yet?

[Ribbiks]

Budoka said:

I’m going to do this particular map on HMP... Nevermind, it’s the exact same.

mistakes were made during wad compilation. Marcaek used v01 of my map instead of v03. so the one that made it into the wad unfortunately has bugs, sloppy texture alignment, and no difficulty settings

[TheOrganGrinder]

Gez said:

That's exactly what it is.

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z-hfGqjP0Q

Hah, you'd think with the amount of time I've spent getting my arse kicked on DM-Phobos over the years I'd have picked up on that. :P

MAP11: Stardust Mayhem

Another slaughtermap. Visually distinctive in its use of sharp orthogonal/diagonal corners and aggressively step pyramidal formations and recesses; this is a map that revels in the artificality enforced upon it. The two secret invulnerabilities provide game-changing aid at difficult points... or they would have done, had I found them at those difficult points instead of when I'd already filled the kill counter. The quirky intermission text is certainly worth a chuckle.

MAP12: The Cake Way

Back to a double-digit monster count but somehow I suspect the difficulty isn't going to let up, especially with my stockpiled arms and hoarded ammo denied to me by the previous map's death exit. Gameplay here is more of a flesh-and-blood puzzle that emphasises early evasion; there's enough firepower lying around to kill everything on the map, especially if the cyberdemon can be talked into lending you a hand against the revenant/Hell Knight swarms that flood the opening arena when you double black to it, but early on all you can do is grab a gun, flee for cover, and dissect your opposition in a more surgical manner. It's a welcome change of pace from the no-holds-barred carnage that precedes it.

[Marcaek]

Ribbiks said:

mistakes were made during wad compilation. Marcaek used v01 of my map instead of v03. so the one that made it into the wad unfortunately has bugs, sloppy texture alignment, and no difficulty settings

I definitely have and included your map in the main wad at some point, but i guess for some reason it didn't save before I edited in the switches

probably going to make a combofix for that and map05's coop weapons

[Gez]

Fix the ZMAPINFO errors while you're at it.

(All the 'sky1 = "SKY1" 0.0' or similar should be replaced either by 'sky1 = "SKY1", 0.0' or by 'sky1 = "SKY1"'.)

[Demon of the Well]

Map 10 -- Big Dwayne's Orbital Concrete and Propane Emporium - 101% Kills / 100% Secrets
Ah, so the BGM here is from Unreal, guess I should've known. I have certainly heard this track before (in its standard format, no less), but I believe that was in another Doom PWAD, the snowy techbase/mine segment of Torment & Torture III, if I recall correctly. Anyway, it's a tasteful selection that suits the map's mood well, a bright spot in has to this point been a bit of a weak point for the set (music selection, I mean).

Anyhow, it's weird. I'm quite fond of Mechadon's characteristic approach to architecture (and this is totally a textbook Mechmap, incidentally, with only the texture limitation setting it apart from his other recent-ish work I've seen), and the look and feel of his levels always reminded me of something else, but it took seeing one of them clothed in a utilitarian cloak of GRAYTALL and FIREBLU (and the less welcome doortrak) for me to realize that the aforesaid similarity was to the work of Michael Krause, an oldschool purveyor of macrotecture and freeform romps through massive, abstract, and usually heavily stylized environments. Lots of differences between their styles of course, but lots of similarities too, and since I'm so fond of the one I suppose it's only natural I'm fond of the other. The 50 Shades "texture pack" (if you can even call it that) is not particularly conducive to aesthetic richness, but fortunately Mechadon's visual approach gets a lot of its flavor from pure shape, scale, lighting, and complex viewpoints, and all of those things are in abundance here, so I guess I somewhat disagree with Dobu that the very stark texture selection greatly diminishes the usual verve of Mech's work--I'd say it's more of a 'different spin' than a 'lesser take.' I do agree with him and others about the doortrack, though....given the nature of the construction here, when this texture shows up it shows up BIG, and often looks quite disruptive as a result, its busy 'grain' look sort of pulling against the map's very clean/stark largescale presentation, such that in many cases I reckon just using more concrete and red stripes might've looked better. Generally speaking though, the visuals are a suitably surreal accompaniment to the freestyle action.

I generally greatly enjoy the gameplay in Mechadon's maps, and this one is no exception. When a map runs as long and large as his tend to, it is more or less inevitable that combat is going to be heavily slated towards incidental encounters with preplaced monsters (though I would dearly like to see an initially more or less empty Mechadon layout be suddenly mass-flooded by teleporting baddies someday!), and this is certainly the case here. Broadly speaking there is always a risk of a map feeling somewhat sloggy when this is the case, but the lion's share of the monsters are weaker foes who are generally quick to dispatch with any given method, so the pace only crawls if the player wants it to. This aside, the fundamental geometric complexity of the intricately stacked/woven architecture has the side-effect of creating what are essentially natural arenas here and there, and Mech has not missed his opportunity to capitalize on these, punctuating major points in progression with somewhat more choreographed fights, often involving either a large glut of monsters released in a fairly small space, or an attack from multiple directions. Freedom of movement and spacious architecture mean that it is fairly simple to choke off or simply escape from many of these if one is so inclined, something the author will periodically soft-check via persistent use not only of his usual favorites, cacodemons (who can actually fly over the really high bounding partitions between areas if you run away from or lose track of them, sometimes showing up at really weird times/places as a result), but also a marked slant towards arch-viles, who curtail maneuverability in airy spaces via their spell attack, and who have ample opportunities to resurrect tons of fallen foes if fled from.

Given ample healing and ammo supplies, few such developments are categorically catastrophic, of course, although perhaps you might find yourself in some difficult situations if you take a really unlucky route (I ended up not finding a rocket launcher until quite a bit later than I could have, but fortunately I had an SSG to compensate somewhat), or if you stir up too much of a hornet's nest at once. On that point, generally speaking I wouldn't say this is a particularly difficult map; the ramp-up in its action is pretty steady/gentle (that it ends in some light slaughter that feels like the endpoint of a gradual progression just tells you how epic the map is in scope :D ), it generally doesn't reign the player in via austerity, and there are few truly nasty traps on offer, with that one cheeky chaingunner sardine-box stunt near the red keycard early perhaps being the most mean-spirited of all. For the most part, the beauty of the approach to gameplay here lies not in generating tons of complex high-threat scenarios or the like, but rather in making an excellent 'playground' of sorts, where each player can make good use of his/her own preferred techniques, with only occasional glances of the mapper's guiding hand via more pronounced setpieces here and there to keep things from becoming too one-note. It's a map whose shape, scale, and interconnectivity make it very fun to play in a very cavalier way (I bypassed a ton of stuff for a while until I finally found an RL, and had quite a cleanup job to do when progression took me back to earlier parts of the layout), but there is plenty of scope for sniping, if that's your thing, for outfoxing traps with brutal efficiency, for leaning heavily on infighting or doing a lot of the work yourself--whatever you like. The icing on the cake is that maps like this are often superbly replayable provided you can stomach the hearty portion--taking a different route at the various junction points can lead to a very different experience from what you had last time, since many of the larger areas play pretty differently depending on when and from where you enter them for the first time, and a few of the setpieces even play out totally differently depending on your avenue of approach, ala the hotbed around the blue keycard.

It is lovely, lovely stuff, this. If I have a criticism it's probably that the final-final battle (around the spiderdemon) seems a bit too understated relative to what has come before--I reckon having some viles on the ground in addition to the rising pillars might've helped, having the BFG at that point would make some much nastier stuff more than manageable--but this is a piddly little concern in the map's grand scheme (and it is very grand), and more and afterthought than anything that impacted my enjoyment while playing.

Now, if you'll all excuse me, I have to get back to interminably writhing in agony while I wait for Vela Pax to come out. Toodles.