The DWmegawad Club plays: 50 Shades of Graytall & Erkattäññe

[Magnusblitz]

MAP12: The Cake Way
100% kills, no map secrets

Didn't really occur to me until the score screen, but I guess those columns at the end do sorta look like candles with wax dripping down... anyways, despite the small monster count this one still gets bloody with lots of higher-tier monsters in close quarters. The architecture is very Ribbiks, and while he manages to make some nice stuff out of the limited texture choices (such as the 'candles' and the far-off columns) not all of it works (too much FIREBLU, I think, just doesn't tile well) as well as some of the other maps.

There's a few other things I'll quibble with... the invisible walls really threw me off, with the first one near the green armor hut being especially damning. Just no real excuse for not having something to indicate there should be a wall there... the switches also aren't the greatest, mainly because they don't stand out - as I said, there's a LOT of FIREBLU on this map, and the first switch sits in front of a whole panel of FIREBLU and barely stands out. There's also no real reason given to do another circuit of the map beyond "well I guess there's nowhere else to go" until you move forward enough that more monsters teleport in. Still, other parts are very nice; I really liked being dropped down into the starting pit with the revenants and cyberdemon (and I actually managed to get him stuck between two revenants and punched to death, heh). Decent map on the whole, though I think others have done more with the theme whereas this map really felt like it was trying to get blood from a FIREBLU stone.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP12: A most delectable Ribbiksisan appetizer. All of the combat here is in uncomfortably close-quarters, but I don’t mind the intimacy as it’s my forte. Smart cyber use, naughty chaingunner use, a simple but pleasing aesthetic… Ribbiks gets straight As from me, as per usual! Only weird things are the invisible walls Magnus mentioned and that you have to play this map from pistol start… seems a little demanding for continuous players.

MAP13: A delightful little set of skirmishes from 4shockblast. I’ve seen him in Suite’s chat plenty but this is the first map I’ve played by him, and it’s quite fun—the BK archvile fight is one of my favorite encounters in 50 Shades, since I did it with only the SSG and had to focus down the AV between targets. Visually it’s not nearly as inventive as I think I'd like, but what’s here is alright. It doesn’t stand quite as tall as the other entries, but that’s because it has some stiff competition; the map provides a simple, reliable, and entertaining experience.

[Budoka]

MAP13: Everlasting Fireblu by 4shockblast

Both KMX and the stream labeled this a breather map. Well, it’s not the hectic insanity of the previous two levels, but it sure as hell isn’t a cakewalk either. … I guess this phrase would have been more befitting of the previous map. …Moving on.

The map starts slowly, but once you grab the blue keycard, things start going nuts very fast. Both the first and third Archvile fights are pretty tough if quite invigorating, the first especially. The second one, not so much… By the way, 4shockblast, those red pillars surrounding the BFG ammo are irritating as shit. Is that on purpose? If so, then bad idea. I couldn’t kill those Cyberdemons properly, I guess you really have to be a BFG ace on this one as the ammo for every weapon is quite limited, much like the amount of space the player gets to move around.

On the art side, this map merely looks proper, like Alfonzo’s, Quakis’s and Joshy’s. Good level overall.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 11 -- Stardust Mayhem - 108% Kills / 100% Secrets
Don't know the name of the track offhand, but I think the BGM here is by Xaser. Same thing was in his endgame map in BTSX E2, as I recall.

Haven't played one like this in a while, bit of a pleasant little surprise. A few asterisks aside, this is very much in what I refer to as the 'oldschool' or 'zone of influence' slaughter vein, ala Hell Revealed, Kama Sutra, parts of Deus Vult, that lot, something that's a bit more uncommon these days than it used to be. It's a compact, symmetrical layout literally blanketed in enemies portioned off into largely homogeneous 'regiments', and the player starts in the center of it all, occupying the low ground, no less. The BFG 9000 is handed out freely before the proceedings begin, and the terrain is lousy with enough bulk cells and other powerups to devastate the map's population of 600+ twice over; the rub is in surviving the first 60 seconds and gaining a foothold, at which point you can begin to bring your ridiculous firepower to bear to eventually clear out the map. In my case, I started by butt-bumping one of the cyberdemons on the ground and having him fight the cluster of 'trons to the east, while I cleared out the mancs to the west with a lot of point-blank BFG, before finishing off the cyb and his bro and the rest of the spiders. This left me with the ground floor to work with as my base of operations, and a blursphere to help make a pass through the rows and rows of chaingunners manning the upper levels. After making a bombing run through there, momentum was firmly on my side, and the rest of the 400 or so monsters waiting in the wings never really stood much of a chance, although there were some valiant tries involving arch-vile commandos inserted into the thick of things at somewhat inopportune moments.

That's the nature of this type of slaughter play, it's not so much about constant pressure or heavily choreographed horde-dancing as it is about momentum and positioning--there is an initial scramble, often panicked (though this map takes a different tack by granting the player 100% initiative in the proceedings), but once you've carved out a space to work from you become a general at war, all of the different (often more or less stationary) pockets of monsters acting as provinces and nations on a Risk board, with how to conquer them left up to your own guile and strategy. Done badly it sort of feels like shoveling snow off the walk, but done well there's a particular satisfaction in it you don't find much of in most other sub-genres of Doom maps. I think this one does it fairly well, with its gradually evolving board that repeatedly reuses/repurposes the compact layout (a fairly rare trait in this kind of map, to whit) and a couple of interesting conceits ala the YK's wormhole, which allows you to neatly outflank the later hordes in the blink of an eye if you've the presence of mind to do so, although it does occur to me that maybe it's a little too softballed for its own good--the ridiculous glut of ammo and resources sort of diminishes the value of strategy, and the two V-spheres are pretty excessive, 'secret' or not. The downside of this type of map is that it tends to entail more of a 'janitoring' element as you clean out entrenched opposition as you move from place to place (something that is often limited or otherwise subsumed in more modern types of slaughtermap), but this one is paced in such a way that there's only a minimal sense of this, what with later waves of monsters being more (theoretically) free to roam than the perched initial occupancy. The two upstairs cybs seemed unnecessary to me, I guess--they can only really fire down at the lower yard, and that's almost never a place the player will want to be, meaning that killing them is more a formality than a progression step--but they're a drop in the ocean, mostly.

Just fine aesthetically, for the most part, its relatively simple look a product of its heavy GRAYTALL slant and its more or less symmetrical floorplan (both FIREBLU and dootrack have only very limited/specialized uses in this one), although if you stop to look at it it does have some neat structural details that are easy to miss, ala the pseudo-tesselated look of the ceiling detail over the ascending stairways, the stylish honeycomb-techlamp colonnade along the southwestern bend, and so on. Some of the sector-lighting looked perhaps a mite too 'tangrams' to me (particularly under the western awning), but as was the case in map 10, I think it's a suitable abstract/surreal backdrop for the action that occurs here.

[scifista42]

MAP11 - "Stardust Mayhem” by Breezeep and mouldy

The beginning was fun thanks to possibility to play it stealth by waking up a single Cyberdemon, causing infighting and only having to dodge projectiles of monsters whose target died so they turned against me until I got them infighting again. However, the rest of the map's gameplay was just an unfun grindful spam for me, with less prominent tactical evasion elements (which are less offensive to me, but also generally nothing great). When I approached the final Revenant horde, I've just lured them away from the corridor and I've used the yellow key portal to bypass them.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP13 Everlasting Fireblu

oh finally a normal map. Something that's mostly boring in gameplay is something I actually appreciate every once in a while. interesting bits are the blue key (a horrible trap) and the platform thingie plus the detour that goes south.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP13: Everlasting FIREBLU

On the heels of rampant slaughter, epic sprawl, and puzzle gameplay, this one comes across as a rather more conventional offering - or at least, as conventional as they come in this particular WAD. Compared to the intensity of what's come before, combat remains at a level of "mildly spicy" as the player navigates this map's various chambers and arenas, which generally evoke a sense of bleached and cut-down minimalism that makes the detail sections really pop. This one is well-placed in the WAD as a whole as I suspect things are going to heat back up again as we head into the home stretch.

[scifista42]

MAP12 - “The Cake Way” by Ribbiks

I liked this. Beautifully compact place full of brief yet exciting challenges, which the more you try to skip, the harder they become as you advance, but it's almost always possible to find safe places to slow down to actually kill the opposition preventing you to rush the progress. Nice architecture and visuals, to the point that I managed to forget that the texturing limit existed! Definitely fun, good experience.

[Tristan]

I swear I'm never going to finish one of these things.
MAP10 is amazing, but even with saves, dying at what I guess is the last fight set me back a long way, and I've not really felt like playing Doom much this past week. Bleh.

Final thoughts or whatever, from memory, 06 10 and 14 are the best maps here, 09 and 11 are the worst because fuck slaughtermaps. Nice WAD overall, and surprisingly decent on the visual front given such a restriction on texturing.

[scifista42]

MAP13 - “Everlasting Fireblu” by 4shockblast

My favorite part is of course the curved corridor with impressive striped pillars and with Revenants whom you need to dance around, which is particularly fun and unusual if you keep standing up on the raised pedestal at the end of the corridor. The rest of the map is OK, more good than bad. That is: Most of the architecture and gameplay setpieces feel generic, and symmetry doesn't improve that feeling, but playability is decent, moderately difficult and OK balanced.

[Naan]

MAP10 - "Big Dwayne’s Orbital Concrete and Propane Emporium” by Mechadon - UVMax with several saves/deaths

Now that's the stuff I absolutely love. I took some time until I can fully appreciate this epic adventure that is shaping up like a map that could've been part of Eternal Doom IV with a castle like retexturing. Plus, it's non linear! Which makes it a bit hard at the beginning, then, barring some traps when you could end up encircled by monsters with no way to escape, this is becoming easier if you are as completitionist as myself, clearing up all areas accessible before unlocking the next ones with grabbed keys, at least, until the big battleground part.

What I liked is while most maps of this kind you are essentially using the SSG more than 70% of the time while progressing, here, shells are quite scarce while rocket boxes flows, forcing the player to use the rocket launcher to take down cacos and small packs of revenants. I also liked how the secrets were handled, with any clue of them being removed from the free computer map, but they could've been spread more over the map, there was one secret triggerring another one, and three others being located very close from each other.

There's undoubtly a massive work of detailing and texturing, as well as many triggers everywhere making this map alive and well, revealing itself progressively. But the skyboxes (floor included) were somewhat used a little too much, which makes me feel like that's a trick to "trick" against the project restrictions.

But enough of being picky, that's for me the best map so far. Awesome job!

[Pirx]

MAP09 - “The Killing Fields” by Joshy

As Demon aptly said, the bark is worse than the bite here, as most fights require a certain, simple tactic, despite the masses released on you here:
-first room: circle, get to the right elevator, jump from there to the upper courtyard
- circle here, rocketing mancs and PEs
- half-circle in the lower courtyard, trailed by 20 or so revenant missiles
- rocket harmless viles in the lift, get the bfg
- when the big mess starts, take the lift up, camping the ledge, occasionally bfg-ing PEs, while 3 cybers massacre everything below
they were all 3 alive when i ran past them into the exit, not knowing that i'm exiting the map.



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

very btsx-like from the start - a large map with slow unreal music. not that difficult, i thought - but some fights are much cleverly designed compared to the map before, like the one with an archie on a pedestal, while imps and demons warp in - normally a joke, if the archvile didn't pin me in place. actually a pretty huge map, as i soon realized, i had to save several times because i had no idea where i was going. fights go well if you're careful and don't charge headlong, as this gets you surrounded quickly. if this was normally textured, it would have been a sprawling base. very nice to explore indeed.

[baja blast rd.]

Map13: "Everlasting Fireblu"

This map starts off strong. The BK trap is one of the best individual encounters in the mapset yet, for its pure deviousness -- mass pinky (and ghost pinky) warp-in right when certain breeds of player are primed to use the RL -- and its flexibility, staged in open terrain that allows the player to escape to safety but only after maneuvering around an archvile spell or two, and at the potential cost of leaving the valuable shellbox and bulletbox behind, when ammo at this point has been somewhat tight. It hits a lull soon afterwards. The warp-in near the initially "dormant" AV doesn't seem to work at all if you enter with a healthy amount of rockets -- simply hold down fire and it's over, quickly --and the AV-rev battle right after it could have used another archvile. The action finishes off well, however, with a duo of cybs that must be maneuvered around in order to finish the map. It's one of those somewhat rare encounters that challenges your sense of hearing and rhythm as much as anything.

Visually, this is the crudest map in the set yet, a collection of rectangular playboxes with various toys, connected with simple hallways. I didn't mind that too much, however, because it was fun.

[Naan]

MAP11 - "Stardust Mayhem” by Breezeep and mouldy - Completed in some way on UVMax with deaths, saves and stuff

Well, as far as slaughterfests are concerned, I think this is the most, mh, straightforward, as cells are all over the map. Interestingly enough, the first minute is much harder than the rest, it took me many deaths to apprehend the beginning. Then, it's the classic door, key, archvile spawning reviving all previous stuff you've killed.

Most of the difficulty comes to health supply. Outside of the 3 megaspheres provided to handle the beginning, there's only medkits left so outside of the secrets invul spheres, you're basically turned into a glass cannon. After trying to chase the last archvile spawns when the yellow key door has been opened, I eventually used the last sphere until the exit and call it a day.

In the same vain than the previous map, the (way smaller) map is evolving as the player progresses - which seems to be a trend in this mapset - but visually speaking, there's nothing really worth of note except it may be the first map to use some slight relief using some combination of red stripe and DOORTRAK to distinguish doors from regular walls, which is well thought. But yeah, I liked MAP08 more than this one.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 12 -- The Cake Way - 101% Kills / No secrets
Cake way? Cakeway? There's a high road and a low road in this map, and not a whole lot else, but as per usual Ribbiks gets some good mileage out of limited real estate. I wouldn't exactly say it's a "piece of cake" ([/dad]), but the point-blank combat is fairly gentle by his standards, with most encounters gaining most of their lethality by trying to incite panic (so don't panic and you stand a good chance!) in the player rather than by demanding high level contortionistic dodging skills--most of the fights have a safe spot or two you can use, provided you can wedge yourself into them at the right time (which is usually ASAP). The main quirk to progression is (as mentioned by others) that you have to complete two circuits of the tiny little map before you're done, with all of the fights on the second go-round being nastier than their earlier counterparts. Maybe it was my imagination, but interestingly enough it seemed to me like the tactics used in the each area on the second trip were deceptively almost EXACTLY the same as those for the first trip (e.g. weave in and out through the candles on the main landing so the monsters all get in each others' way and clump up, thus becoming ripe for rocket splash, immediately jam yourself into the little groove between the monster-platforms to get out of the line of fire in the second area, stick near the curved wall and circle around the soulsphere pillar while the monsters trip over each other in the third area, and so forth), just with much heavier penalties (e.g. more or less instant death rather than mere injury) for screwing up. If intentional this is quite clever in a wink-wink nudge-nudge sort of way, and if mostly unintentional I suppose it's a lesson in how much choreography is determined not just by the actors but by the stage itself. I reckon I'd have liked a longer map, or rather one with more unique areas, better, but hey, what's here mostly works. My favorite bit was the cyberdemon + mob fight on revisiting the initial layer--sort of plays like a demented, sadomasochistic game of Red Rover, that--whereas I feel like the viles on the platforms/in the booth on the return to the second where pretty much just a waste of time, since the repeated strategy there is pretty much 95% theory and 5% execution.

I think the level looks good. Didn't look anything remotely like a cake to me, mind you, but then again, the notion that the downscrolling doortrak on many of the candle-posts was supposed to be melting wax flew completely over my head until I saw Magnusblitz mention it. With that in mind, the picture became a little clearer in my imagination--I even started looking at the weird FIREBLUE flanged-mace tower-thingies surrounding the play area as being shadow-cloaked faces of some unearthly partygoers--but while actually playing the impression was of a totally abstract space, albeit a mostly pleasant-looking one. Ribbiks is no stranger to the surreal, of course, and so in that sense it's not surprising he was able to make something palatable out of the limited texture selection, but what sets the map's look apart is how he did it: simply by swathing almost everything in heavy gloom, and allowing FIREBLU's natural appearance as a sort of 'energy field' of some sort to rope the contrast scheme together. In a way it's almost strange that this is the only map so far to mask its stark visuals in darkness, but I suppose that speaks to the ingenuity of the mapset's authors. BGM selection felt right, too--if a bit surprisingly 'classic Doom' considering the author's usual predilections--so the set seems to be looking up in at aspect lately, as well.

Oh, and I never did run into that invisible wall the guys were talking about. If I had to guess at its location I'd say......center of the map, walling off the side of the crystal-sector candle-bridge leading to the third area, maybe? I guess Ribbiks has me trained, I distrust pitfalls so much in his maps that I tend to give edges a wide berth, heh.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 13 -- Everlasting FIREBLU - 108% Kills / 100% Secrets
Not really what I was expecting from this author--most of my very limited exposure to his mapping has been in the form of spectating KingDime dragging himself through excruciating barrel-running exercises in needlepoint metagamery--but I reckon that's probably for the best, the straightforward monster-stomping Doom action on display here is really more my kind of thing anyway. Here, 4shockblast/shockblast4 serves up a concise collection of small and mostly simple setpiece battles with a nice amount of variety between them, as well as a pleasantly gradual difficulty curve that should appeal to players getting weary of the beasts and behemoths that have been dominating the mapset of late. Things start out quite smalltime with basic room-clearing/projectile-dodging forays versus a motley collection of demonic punks, but begin ramping up with the blue key battle, which gets ugly in a flash unless you get the hell out of dodge in an eyeblink, and from that point encounters emphasize acute positioning and wise weapon selection in order to stay ahead of the curve, ending in a brief sort of kinetic switch-puzzle to net you the BFG you first see at the level's start to liquidate another pair of cybertwins at the end. I found the balance to be pretty player-friendly, with healthy (but not excessive) amounts of ammo available for most weapons (bullets, as is so often the case in modern maps, getting the short end of the stick), and enough health scattered about in rare but high-value piles to excuse a serious mistake or two. Despite some sloppy mistakes as far as dodging goes (I think I actually took most damage versus the imps/specters/arachnatrons during the initial foray into the lift-column fort) my playthrough went pretty smoothly, I reckon I got ahead of the momentum game by spending very few rockets in the big hall fight and literally zero in the BK fight (lucky guess I was holding the SSG when the shit hit the fan there), which left me with plenty to spend in later encounters, which in some cases trivializes them, particularly the blind-alley vile-trap as some other players have mentioned. As far as balance goes I guess it's worth mentioning that I did find all of the secrets, but only got the 'zerk pack and the hidden plasma rifle while rechecking the level after killing everything, so I don't think this should have skewed my experience too much.

In terms of aesthetics and construction, this is the most simplistic and least striking presentation in the set to this point--the rooms, which are mostly boxes with a few loose objects scattered around in them, serve their purpose of hosting the fights they contain, and little more. There's little elegance to the route of progression; beyond a couple of surprise teleports (and the RK pickup is not particularly surprising, I imagine most players will be expecting something to happen there), map traversal simply involves wandering down spartan corridors between boxes where combat will obviously take place. Geometrically, this looks like it could've been something from a much older era of PWADing (which I imagine is probably refreshing to some palates at this point), with dominant symmetry, heavy orthogonality, generously scaled rooms, nonexistent floor/ceiling detail, and very limited/utilitarian sector-detailing in walls (though there are a few strange-looking spots of sector-intensive detailing as well, ala the aforementioned plasma rifle secret). In a weird sort of way, the 50 Shades texture restrictions somehow seem less pronounced here simply because the visual style naturally lends itself to a limited texture selection, I think. Some spots look better than others--my favorite is the approach to the RK fort, with its cloak of shadow and luminous FIREBLU beacons--but overall I'd describe the presentation as 'inoffensively bland.' I reckon the main thing that makes the level look dryer than it needs to is not the simple shapes so much as the limited attention to lighting relative to other maps in the set, underscoring the importance of light contrast in gussying up the 50 Shades texture scheme (and the level looks best where it's darkest, incidentally).

[Magnusblitz]

Demon of the Well said:

Oh, and I never did run into that invisible wall the guys were talking about. If I had to guess at its location I'd say......center of the map, walling off the side of the crystal-sector candle-bridge leading to the third area, maybe? I guess Ribbiks has me trained, I distrust pitfalls so much in his maps that I tend to give edges a wide berth, heh.

The invisible wall is here.

MAP13: Everlasting Fireblu
100% kills, 3/4 secrets

Back to normal here. Things start off quiet - imps, zombies, etc - but quickly ramp up in danger level, as it's mostly revenants from here on out, with lots of ambushes and close-quarters combat to keep the player on his toes. Interestingly, ambushes aren't really tied towards grabbing items or keys, but often unleashed just as the player moves forward through the level - even just going down an innocuous corridor can be a trap.

Looks are pretty basic here, with mostly orthogonal, blocky angles and somewhat bland texturing, but looks aren't really the name of the game here. Seems clear the author was working on coming up with some interesting combat setups, and I think he succeeded there. I agree with DOTW though that I really dig the darkened approach to the red key area.

[scifista42]

MAP14 - “Astral Nausea” by dobu gabu maru

Interesting, stylish, no shorter and no longer than appropriate for this kind of map, IMO. The first setpiece was easy to skip without firing at all. The second one could be solved by consistent rocket fire into the Barons through everything in the way. The third one would have been tricky if I didn't carry a plasmagun from previous level, which made it trivial to rush through again. The fourth one was a decent final exercise. I suppose that pistol starting and particularly UV-Maxing this map would make it really engaging, but I'll rather pass on it, I probably wouldn't handle it without yet another save/load abuse.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP14 Astral Nausea

I associate dobu maps with largeness and strange-shapeness, as I've seen with Surreptitious Ichor, Immundum, and Iron Exuviae. this map is certainly strange-shaped, times five, but it's quite a quick and dirty map. the beating hearts are your portals to destiny, with each consecutive area being more strange, twisted, mirror mazey, and whatever adjective I can think of. Despite it's twisted nature, I don't actually get lost or cramped in these mini mazes, and I think that sets it over other dobu maps. well that zombie-filled room though.

[Naan]

MAP12 - “The Cake Way” by Ribbiks - DNF yet

Back to the double digit monster country with this very tight map on which I eventually got stuck because the only save I have done is when I was facing four archviles with only 14 rockets left, and no health left on the entire map. I wish there was lower difficulty settings so I could actually finish this off without doing a ton of quicksave stuff and looking forward the re-upload of the map.

To be fair, the fights and the general strategy to adopt is not even as hard as some other maps were, it's all about careful management of the resources the map hands you, playing as much as possible with infights which could be hard in the rev/knight/cybie fight in a place so dark and cramped by the candles making it fairly difficult to accomplish without taking some damage and wasting too much ammo on aforementionned candles. It quickly becomes clear that the blue sphere has to be saved for the second round.

Visually speaking it's very dark at places which successfully hides the textural poverty and makes for a moody atmosphere, there's a lot of scrolling down DOORTRAK which seems to be Ribbik's marquee, and switches are as simple as they can get that poorly compares with other map stuff, but it could get better in next upload. Unlike others, the invisible wall stuff didn't disturb me that much as not falling off platforms is not what this map is about.

Looking forward being better at Doom so I could beat it without saves!

[Pirx]

MAP11 - "Stardust Mayhem” by Breezeep and mouldy

looked long at that one... then i found bumping into a cyber and using him to kill the arachnotrons the most survivable tactic, until i had cleared out the starting area, then it was mostly spamming bfg at everything. i rarely play slaughter maps but nevertheless found this fun, perhaps i'll try them more often ;)



MAP12 - “The Cake Way” by Ribbiks

a different kind of map. ribbiks' dream map style, remarkable looks for the limitations of the wad. with short, sharp fights, the kind i find most difficult because they require precise action and lock the player in, taking away his speed advantage. at least, ammo is sufficient. i used the cyber to kill the mob at the end. great map, the best map so far, together with count trakula.

[Pirx]

Magnusblitz said:

The invisible wall is here.

lol. and i bumped into it repeatedly and wondered why it's there.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP14: Astral Nausea
100% kills, no map secrets

Well, this one is... interesting. It also completely eschews the texture theme, instead using a dark blue floor and infinite sky to make floor designs and entirely-black or sky walls. Hey Dobu, it's called 50 Shades of GRAYTALL ya git. ;)

The map is basically divided into four sections, each with varying enemies and varying levels of the obstacles getting in the players' way. As scifista said it's probably about the perfect length for a concept map like this... can't say this one would be high on my replay list, but it's certainly worth seeing and playing once. And really makes good use of that pretty sky texture.

[scifista42]

MAP15 - “The Serpentine Lemniscate” by Xaser

Absolutely "modern art". Stylish, unique and (superficially) impressive, but mostly shallow in execution of classic gameplay concepts that I like Doom for, like challenge, variety and exploration. It's just too much of a scripted experience than a "game-y" one, which I don't like. But thumbs up for technical aspect of the transformations and visual/architectural polish.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP15 The Serpentine Lemniscate

Xasermap = spirals + good music. A fun climbing map that can be sped through over and over again due to the changing nature of the map. going around the infinity spiral until you hit the two towers surrounded by it, go through, and unlock one of two teleporters to this time go through the bottom. I guess the one improvement would be on teleport ambushes, since I had to backtrack for a few lackeys, but the closets are constructed well so that no one gets stuck on one particular side. And as always, fun.

[Naan]

MAP13 - “Everlasting Fireblu” by 4shockblast - UVMax with 2 saves and many deaths

Despite the name there is not that much FIREBLU in there, but it is quite a step down in terms of general design and architecture compared to many other maps from the set (switches are as simple as they were in previous maps) but it plays rather well.

We're back to a more conventional map than previous ones. I liked the blue key fight but was far from being the hardest: I took down the revs by circling twice and damaging the pain elemental in between, focus the archvile then finish the job without firing any rocket. The third archvile fight was way tougher, and I'm still very bad at fighting cyberdemons with a BFG, which scored many of my deaths while trying to get it. I suspect the teleport line unlocked near the red key door more of a trap than an help to fight the cybies. Okay'ish map.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 14 -- Astral Nausea - 102% Kills / No secrets
This was another of the maps I'd already played, pre-release. Generally I look at Dobu's more 'serious' stuff (that is, in comparison to something like 'Butcher's Kiln' or that new WOOOOOO map) as a real treat that I'd ideally want to savor in its complete form, but I think I butted in a little on this one because people were trying to get him to tone it down, and there's always some little part of my soul that dies when that happens. :D

And this has been toned down, but only very slightly, for the most part it's just the same map I remember. It bears one of the most unique aesthetics in a set full of 'em, eschewing much in the way of solid/conventional architecture in favor of swathes and swathes of endless astral sky, framed and limned by delicate ripples of black matte void, with occasional crystal pillars and other bounding constructions for shape, although the way things are set up has an interesting effect of making actual entities or prop objects your primary anchors for navigation and direction, rather than pieces/parts of the map's actual physical structure. It's not seamless--in order to keep you getting caught on torches, there are blocking lines around the periphery, and from certain views these cut off the 'ceiling' designs in ugly/unnatural ways--but for the most part it's both highly functional and visually engaging, not always an easy combination. The BGM is absolutely lovely as well, continuing the WAD's steady rehabilitation of its questionable selections earlier on, would certainly like to hear this one again in some other map sometime, whatever it is (maybe you should read the textfile, Demon...).

I'm not quite sure how much it's a necessary side-effect of the peculiar 'art direction' and how much it's a standalone design choice, but the other most notable aspect of the map is that it's essentially totally 2D, literally as flat as a Wolfenstein 3D map, barring the possibility of occasionally getting flicked up into the air by an arch-vile attack, of course. This requires that all of the fights be heavily gimmicky to retain interest, but I think for the most part Dobu has done a good job with them (and this is definitely a map helped by its short length on that front, as well). They all focus on the core principle of literally surrounding the player with foes and denying him/her a convenient way to stand ground and turn the tide; the prominence of the RL as the map's primary weapon flavors each of these encounters (usually complicating things, of course!), but apart from these shared threads they each accomplish the goal in different ways--the first is a fairly traditional (but no less enjoyable) arch-vile fight where the rub is reaching cover while a smattering of cronies run interference; the second uses chains of high-HP monsters in more congested pathways for a scenario where the primary difficulty is a scarcity of ammo (including a hefty helping of lineblocked Baronsteak to preclude someone cheekily excusing themselves early); the third is a zany streetcleaner scenario where Doomguy literally plows through plots of imps and zombies amidst a forest of crystal trees while a couple of viles and other heavies hone in him from a distance, and the last is psychedelic spiderweb whose strangely deceptive strands allow distant enemies some really unintuitive firing angles, meaning you have to dance nervously around Big Mama at the heart of the web until things settle down a bit. Of these, the third fight is still easily my favorite; it's patently ludicrous in concept, but nevertheless still brings a smile to my face--whoever would've thought from the earlier fights that the chaingun would turn out to be MVP? By contrast, I reckon the second fight is still the dryest--it's definitely the sort of thing that will easily catch out players unaccustomed to this general style of inhospitable gameplay, but for the rest of us it's a fairly rote outing in passive-aggressiveness, and sort of telling that 1/4 of the playable content takes up about 75% of the actual runtime.

As for differences, the only significant one I noticed is that the baron-blockade in that second fight used to be a (stationary) cyberdemon instead. He was of course more threatening than they are and made it trickier to just troll the hell out of the encounter, but given the weapon progression and his HP he also exponentially magnified the ammo austerity at play, as well as just plain taking ages to kill (given the map's orientation relative to the cardinal directions, firing at him with the SSG used to see a bunch of whiffed shots due to blockmap fuckery). I think the backpack may also be a new inclusion, and a good one too, as it allows you to play the third fight looser/freer. Half-spent zombie clips as an invaluable resource, I just can't get over that....

Anyway, enjoyable map from Dobu, if rather eccentric (not that either of those things is a surprise, really).

[baja blast rd.]

Map 14: Astral Nausea

Sorry, but I rage-IDDQD'd this map in the second arena after getting caught between blocking decorations and dying, and then quit after getting caught on torches in the third arena too. Apparently the impassable lines are supposed to preclude getting caught between stuff, but I'm playing in prBoom+ cl9 and I'm getting caught between stuff. -____-

I can say that the first arena was fun, and the music is cool, and the shapes of the arenas look nice in GZDB.

I was planning to quit the playthrough at the first hard map because I've been avoiding hard maps for over a month. Will be back for Erkattanne.

[Lingyan203]

So the video playthrough is coming along well. Apparently I just beat my first Ribbiks' map for the first time on Ultra-Violence without mid-level saves, which is map12. I really hope that I can be ready for Ribbiks style wads in the future for my future playthroughs.

As for maps 09 and 11, they were both slaughtermaps. Very hard but I enjoyed them. Sometimes they can be a pain to finish, but I really like Joshy maps a lot. Map09 was hard but fun. On my first recording attempt I actually got up to the final large wave of monsters but then died to a cyberdemon and some revenant homing rockets. Watching Ancalagon's UV max run helped me figure out how to handle that final monster horde a lot. Map11 had a very tricky beginning, but using the 2 invulnerabilites really made the map a lot more straightforward to finish. However, I didn't like the forced death exit at the level. I even tried to see if I can still keep my weapons exiting the map with an invulnerability powerup, but it still forces me to start the next map with a pistol start. Overall, both of these maps were a lot of fun and I enjoyed them a lot, but map11's beginning was a little bit infuriating; the rest of it after that first part was fun.

Map10 was very long and infuriating. The secrets took me like forever to find and it was very difficult to figure them out, even opening up Doom builder didn't help me as much, but eventually I figured them out. The slaughter map in the second half of the map was intense, but a lot of fun.

Map12 was intense, especially from pistol start and that it's a Ribbiks style map. I liked the architecture, except playing his map for the first time ever was a new challenge for me. The part with the cyberdemon and the whole bunch of monsters teleporting into the starting area with the small pillars was very difficult and during my earlier attempts I often ended up with low health; making the next trap with the barons and chaingunners extremely difficult to get past. However, my recent attempt I had more than 150% health and I got up the lift, firing my plasma gun at the barons as soon as they were close to me. Then I dropped down back to the starting area where I had the cyberdemon and big monster fight where I took down the chaingunners made the rest of the map so easy. This map was still a lot of fun; I'm not gonna lie. I really hope that after beating a Ribbiks map for the first time it will help me for future ribbiks maps when I play or record a video playthrough of them.

Right now I'm on map13. Hopefully I can try and finish this set soon. So far I'm enjoying it a lot.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP14: Alright boys and girls, get ready for another long winded post by yours truly.

So if anyone enjoyed this map, you have Marcaek to thank entirely for its inclusion, because I wasn’t going to touch this project with a ten foot pole until he probed me to do so (some ideas tumbled around in my head, but they were nothing more than passing fancies). After he asked me to contribute, I decided that perhaps it would be a fun way of limiting myself (always a good thing), so I got to work on brainstorming what I could do with these restraints. Originally, my map was going to be all red.

Yup. That’s right—I would manually align each GRAYTALL texture so that every wall would show only a slim 7 pixels of tomato red, because I figured no one else was crazy enough to try that. And try I did!—for exactly one room, and then I immediately said “nope nope nope fuck this”

So instead I decided to be a contrarian and use no textures. Well, I still had to use one texture, but I’d smother the DOORTRAK in darkness so that the player couldn’t tell what it was from afar, only leaving the sky to be their guide against the cold void. Since the default sky in the project was a beautiful deep blue, I chose my flat to be that bluish bramble instead of that standard "black" flat. The candles and impassable lines near the wall are definitely obnoxious, but they’re intentionally there so that the player can’t rub up against the wall and see DOORTRAK and break the illusion. However I couldn’t have impassible lines around all the pillars without significantly sacrificing player space—ditto with the fourth arena—so it was kinda pointless to keep. Still, I like their presence: it prevents the arenas from feeling completely devoid of personality (besides each pattern).

Whenever I begin drafting a map, gameplay is almost always considered first. I may have visual goals I approach each design with, but I try to remain cognizant of how I can challenge the player in each and every area. Because of that, my mind works easily and most efficiently in bite-sized arenas while mapping, so I didn’t hit any stumbling blocks working on this compared to the unyielding torment that was “Cyberdemon’s Playground” and “Fightnincial Crisis at Enwrong”. I completed each arena in the very order you play them, and knew basically what I wanted to add when I started making them—the only thing I needed to determine was what kind of pattern to leave on the ground & ceiling.

The opening’s sole purpose is to unveil to the player how warping works in this map, as I had to come up with a “textureless” way to warp them around while avoiding W1 lines that they might stumble into accidentally—utilizing the hearts on the pillars seemed like the best option. With each arena I wanted a different weapon to be the crux of the battle, and I started with the RL first because I love rocket launcher-only battles and didn’t want the player sneaking in a shotgun to that fight. IIRC while playtesting I originally had 3 archviles running around which was quite a lot of fun, but I wanted the fights to have an increasing difficulty, which was hard to do with such a rude opener.

Actually, each fight underwent some changes, with the most significant adjustment happening to the second arena. I removed the choke-point cyberdemon there and I’m a little sad to see go, but figure it’s for the best as he could consistently bone the player in the original version. Without his menacing presence the fight is a bit of a dull one, but the way he would command the center of the arena (and the subsequent grind of having to promote baron infighting with him) was just a bit too much for a community project.

The third area is definitely my favorite as it’s a goddamn mess to play when you have no ammo. That and I appreciate when zombiemen are used in a threatening way, and wanted to try my hand at a big zombieman party. The fourth area also suffered a nerf (there used to be 3 arachs in each quadrant and 2 chaingunners in the wings), but it at least allowed normal players to have a chance at surviving it upon first glance. I feel my original placement there gave the spiral arena a resplendent dynamism between the enemies and their avenues of attack, while removing the extra chaingunners/arachs makes camping a significantly easier feat.

I’m not disappointed by my map (I made all these changes willingly after all!), but I think I focus on these alterations because the entire experience is literally centered around its four battles. The visuals are the main draw if my style of claustrophobic brawling isn’t your cup of tea, but I don’t have anything to comment about those... each pattern was quick and mindless to draw, letting the skyboxes to most of the “wow” factor. Astral Nausea definitely is gimmicky, but hey, that's the map I set out to make.

Demon of the Well said:

people were trying to get him to tone it down, and there's always some little part of my soul that dies when that happens.

Haha I do feel a tad hurt as well, but it's a good hurt—all for the betterment of the map! If it makes you feel any better, I have a vicious mapset I've been fiddling with inbetween big projects that will unveil my true misanthropic nature—Sweet Dreams Suitepee and Hunter II are the heralds for what is to come. Oh, and the midi is Darangen's remix of Schala's Theme.