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dobu gabu maru

The DWmegawad Club plays: Japanese Community Project

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MAP 12: This map really started to drain my health and ammo. I really had to start getting clever and tactical to make it. That said, I have to hand it to a bunch of these maps: they are handling a technical limitation of the engine in a much better way than Romero did in his recent e1m4b map. That is, they are color coding areas of the map to hint at what switches would do in order to get around the usual 3 key limit. Romero numbered switches and doors using numbers in light, where as the JPCP group has used bright colors, especially orange and green. The colors is a bit more elegant a solution than the numbers since it is immediately apparent to people of any background (although, of course, the JPCP group is no stranger to plopping Japanese characters into the map design).

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MAP13 : Bad Morning by Namsan

The entrance/exit room has a bed in it… did I just wake up or am I still dreaming ? Probably the latter, considering the surreal look of the techbase environment I’m traversing. The location type is run of the mill stuff for Doom, but the look of this place is just… really off. In a good way, mind you.

I like the spatial progression here a lot, but on the other hand there are way too many supplies. Seriously, for how well most of the encounters are designed, how the player actually handles them doesn’t seem to matter much. Also, some of the secrets are very easy to find. Is that « HEX » one a reference to something that eludes me ? It’s quite peculiar at any rate.

Overall, it’s a good level but it could stand to be a tad less forgiving.

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Map13
This one never gelled for me. The various locations and set pieces felt rather disconnected and arbitrary through much of its length. It felt more cohesive once I went through the teleporter to the yellow key arena, but I got rather frustrated there because I couldn’t find the yellow key. Didn’t realise I had already picked it up for a good five minutes. I am so good at Doom :-)

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MAP13 - “Bad Morning” by Namsan

doomguy wakes up in his bed, and his day is ruined by hellspawn. the indoor part of the map is a mix of doom2 base with rock and wood. some circle strafing works wonders here, because the large room with the mancubus on a pedestal offers enough space to dance around them, while they kill each other. BK / RK are found within this indoor complex and serve to open a door with red and blue bars, which rather unexpectedly opens a passage to a hellish lava & brimstone outdoor arena, very different from the indoor half. rockets and plasma are amply provided, enough to steamroll the opposition. open the yellow door, and you're in your bedroom again.

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Map12 - FDA here

goddamn this was harder than i was expecting - the chaingunners chipping away at your health puts you on edge and makes the map harder than it really should be considering the actual health & enemy encounters in this.

+ MIDI
+ lovely floating star/techbase
+ varied enemy types

- hitscan snipers all over the shop
- cramped walkways - some only wide enough for you and/or one enemy. i felt like a died a few times simply because i couldnt dodge as i got stuck somewhere that didnt let me move
- sight-lines are also obstructed, and its sometimes difficult to tell what you can/cant shoot through

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agree about the cramped hallways, they should be perhaps 50% wider?

btw, is there a way to upscale a map without having to redraw it?

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MAP12 - “Magnetic force apparatus” by burabojunior - UVMax on first try (exited at 12% health!)

I liked more this map than the last two. I think it's equally difficult, but in a way I prefer. Sure, the hitscanners are annoying and you still have to manage your ammo but I feel the challenge is more "equalized" throughout the level, and I generally like this kind of incremental progress in maps. I didn't mind a lot the "crampness" of this sweet Vrack-inspired high-tech environment as it's not like you are fighting lots of high tier monsters in those corridors anyway (I'm looking at you, rev fight from MAP10).

Nice stuff overall!


MAP13 - “Bad Morning” by Namsan - UVMax on second try

Not only the morning is bad, but it last quite long to empty the 300+ monster count in order to have some good sleep back. It wasn't quite the nightmare in the skill5 as the difficulty level dropped a bit from last maps as it is much more forgiving, but sure the layout felt surreal but appropriate anyway. It's also one of the first maps that encourages you to use and abuse the plasma gun.

I died in the yellow key arena due to sloppy play, even though that's hands down the most challenging part in the map (those distant revs are tough!), so I've noticed that you could get the blue key and the red key in any order, and there is not a harder route than the other. Secrets were quite easy to get too, but taking the blue key route first made me pick up two blue armors almost in a row.

Great map too!

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MAP12: Magnetic Force Apparatus
100% kills, 0/1 secret

Back to a very modern-feeling design with this one, being on a floating space station with plenty of silver and colored light strips. Not a lot of space to manuever here, and plenty of hitscanners - if anything, the monster count is a bit misleading since a lot of it is large groups of hitscanners being teleported in all at once, or placed in areas where they can be popped easily with barrels. It's still challenging, though, as instead of trying to threaten the player with high-HP enemies it threatens him by removing his mobility.

I missed the SSG until the very end, which may have contributed to my extreme ammo shortage problems - after the soulsphere fight I was pretty much out of ammo, and also had to be quite judicious for the yellow key fight.

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MAP12 - “Magnetic force apparatus” by burabojunior

Cool looking space base. Its very exposed with a lot of hitscan, and even though there was plenty of health around I was losing it pretty rapidly, was there any armour? I could have used a bit more if there was. Still it was fun trying to use the scenery to get the better of the teleporting hordes. Space felt a little tight, particularly a couple of staircases that I banged my head on the ceiling when i went down them. I can forgive a lot when it looks this nice though.

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Map 9: 100% kills, 5/8 secrets

I didn't feel a Tricks and Traps vibe at all on this map due to the linear nature. There's a couple of encounters which can become dangerous but it's mostly easygoing. Stumbled into secrets which tend to be really powerful here. Still had some fun even though the map feels basic. Nearly every monster makes a token appearance except for the archvile (on HMP anyways) and lost souls unconnected to a PE. Have that hunch that was a design intention. Easy yet fun ending where as long as one isn't too jumpy with the trigger finger, it's easy to let the cyber do the work. Got a photo finish by offing the cyber right about when it killed the last baron too.

Since I don't know Japaneese, the text spelled out by the hidden crusher on the automap is lost on me. Did reload and find the remaining secrets too, how quirky.

Map 10: 100% kills, 1/1 secret

Ouch, this map is vicious. Continous on HMP will full ammo and 200/200 still posed challenge; UV without saves is way beyond my skill level. Entering the first room puts one in line of sight of a pair of perched chaingunners; there's two revenants in a small room with no cover later on, and those are the easier setpieces. There's a couple of progression puzzles that would be right at home in Eternal Doom. BFG handed out in the open but very little cell ammo so it's important to reserve them lest some encounters become even meaner than they already are. That last fight after obtaining all the keys is easily the nastiest. Arachs and cacos in space with limited cover and mobility is mean enough but add that archvile which can cover most of the already limited space. Much pain (and savegame reloads) ensued.

More frustrating than fun this map was for me. The challenge Doomers may gobble stuff like this up.

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Map 12 -- Magnetic Force Apparatus - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA
Burabojunior returns with a pint-sized orbital bloodbath, which seems quite reminiscent of the first of Kassman's two much-celebrated spacebase maps from CC4 (which in turn took some obvious influence from the Vrack series, of course) with its dazzling azure starfield and floating lattices of neon and polished chrome. Music sounds quite familiar, too, perhaps also featuring in something I've played fairly recently, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

Quite a spiffy-looking little number, I reckon this should easily appeal to a wide variety of palates with its clean, chunky base trappings and elaborate array of vibrant neon highlights and metal trim, a presentation which uses a number of boldly saturate colors in close proximity without falling prey to visually cluttered aspect which has undermined some of the most wildly colorful sections in previous maps, a success which I'm inclined to attribute largely to the approach to lighting, which uses a gentle dimness as the default and brighter spots as the highlights, rather than the more common practice of using brightness as the default and low light as contrast. A certain strain of pundit could probably find a way to fault it for being overly 'conventional' in aesthetic (it really is very CC4-ish) in comparison to many of the other maps, which have evinced a number of unusual styles not oft seen in western-made maps, but I reckon it's hard to fault the author for going with something that has been proven to work. More decisive in theme than the off-kilter Plutonian coloring-book look of "Thaumasia" and much more meticulously honed and polished than the relatively rough/loose offering which was "Riminshi Valley", the only quirk of craftsmanship I see reason to fault here is that sometimes the layout is simply overly cramped. Given the thing placement this does not usually negatively impact gameplay too much (and indeed, some of that coveted impression of bloodiness probably results directly from how compact the playspace is), but it does hamper basic movement at a couple of points (most notably when you try to move down either of the twin stairways flanking the rocket launcher), which simply doesn't feel good in-game.

There's really not a whole lot to be said about the gunplay in this case, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's an issue with it--it is simple, even borderline mindless at points, but it's also fun/satisfying. Both monster composition and deployment here are quite similar to what we saw in "Thaumasia", meaning that a relatively light initial staffing on each of the main platforms with power-hitters for pressure sooner or later gives way to a hearty glut of fodder enemies delivered en masse by teleportation, which the player then summarily mows down with extreme prejudice. Both the rocket launcher and plasma gun feature here as part of the regular progression (whereas the prize for the one secret is a berserk pack, which seems rather odd given both that item's relatively low value in this setting and its late appearance); to me it didn't feel like there was a whole lot of scope for using either, but this is perhaps a function of how brutally efficient the supershotgun can be against tightly-grouped packs of weak enemies, and of some B-movie barrel placements for flavor at a few points. The final battle seemed a mite off to me since it didn't seem than any of the monsters could actually enter the sealed YK area until I decided to let them (and it now occurs to me that I probably could've doubled back and attacked them from their flanks....), but I'm not sure what alternative I'd suggest in this case. I was surprised to read of the ammo troubles other players had, as I never really felt like I had to sweat the matter too much myself. Perhaps a sort of subtle balance issue, where the UV skill level pans out to be more generous than HMP as a result of the player being able to get extra ammo off of extra zombie corpses?

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MAP12

OK this one was absolutely stunning to look at. The music was well fitting and the layout is basically perfect for this style of level. However playing this on continuous as I am, this map was unexpectedly tight on ammo. I almost never had any shells or pistol ammo in the map. One of the big encounters with the blue key makes you rely on a rocket launcher with enemies spawning in all around, I really didn't think the rocket launcher was the right choice of weapon here, The yellow key encounter gives a plasma rifle which worked there but I think the rocket launcher would've been better suited in that fight. That's just me though. The rest of the map was excellent and the secret was cool but a berserk pack is kind of a lame gift, I would've preferred another soul sphere or Bulk Plasma pack or something =/.

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Demon of the Well said:

Perhaps a sort of subtle balance issue, where the UV skill level pans out to be more generous than HMP as a result of the player being able to get extra ammo off of extra zombie corpses?


The difference between UV and every other difficulty level is that on UV there's one more revenant and one less spectre than the other settings.

So it's mostly just "you're stupidly good at this game, DotW" :)

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MAP13 Bad Morning

Well I played this in the morning but wouldn't call it a bad morning, cause I really enjoyed this one too. Combat is linear but very consistent. No real standouts, just good, classic Doom fun, although the hellish outdoor shootout has quite a few surprises. Love how it all winds up back at the beginning of the level too, and the fact that you went out of bed, killed some demons, warped back there, and went back to bed is quite novel.

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MAP13: Bad Morning

This one begins with a sense that the player has woken up to the titular "bad morning," and ends on a question mark - has the player's journey through an increasingly disjointed and incoherent battlefield been a waking one, or, as the final teleporter delivers you back to the questionable safety of your bed, now occupied by a bloodied corpse, one has to wonder, was it all just a wretched dream?

There are some fun fights and design elements in this one, but I think overall the mashing together of different themes and architectural styles doesn't quite work, even if the intent is to communicate a sense of the player's sanity slowly crumbling. I feel like there are maybe three different, good maps to be found here if you were to pull it apart and fill in the spaces in each. As it is, I'd describe the final result as decidedly average.

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MAP14 - G_T_Factory
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 100/100/100

A simple, semi-symmetric level with the style from the mid 90's. Not a tough level, but you need to be careful if you're playing with pistol start; A group of shotgun guys at the beginning, insufficient ammo to deal with a horde of monsters behind the door(unless you grab some shells and boomstick above), so the monster infighting is forced to occur in this case. And there's one thing I don't like from this level: it could be better if the small door at the beginning, sector 51, could be opened from outside. Since that one-way door prevents me to get inside, the only way to proceed the level is jumping into the nukage to get a teleporter or find the secret passage. There's a radiation suit hidden behind the corner, but it's risky for me to jump into the blind spot while I only have less than 10% health. That being said, if you need to jump into the damaging floor to proceed the level, please show some mercy to place a single radiation suit at the safe, visible spot. Other than that, this level is fine for old day's standard, and the secret teleporter for BFG is just classic.

P.S.: I still can't figure out the purpose of sector 169-170. Maybe it's the scrapped monster teleportation?

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14 - demo. I remember this one. It's a quick violent level that gradually becomes more and more open. The structure is simple but it works pretty well. I like how some doors can be operated only from the inside, so if you go to the street you'll have to look for a secret passage in order to get back. Minor nitpick: maybe sectors 158 and 161 should be 4 units higher so that the imp could leave his alcove? Overall this is a good example of a short but memorable map.

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MAP14 : G_T_Factory by Tomass

Open-ended map with a Doom E1 aesthetic but lots of Doom 2 monsters. There are many ways to go about surviving it, but none are immediately apparent. The visual style, tricky thing placement, non-linear structure and heavy use of damage floors all contribute to make this map look like something John Romero would have made. Which I would normally be biased against, because as far as I’m concerned Romero-style maps should only be made by Romero himself, but I have to concede that this level was too much fun for me to pretend I don’t like it.

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MAP13: Bad Morning
100% kills, 6/7 secrets

I'd say this is a pretty classic-styled level, at least in terms of gameplay, which is mostly just exploring some large areas and killing the monsters you come across, pretty straightforward. Item placement is a bit weird in spots - a shotgun is given at the start but no shells, so the rocket launcher is needed to kill the small fry early on. There's a couple berserk packs placed only a few feet from each other, and health and armor is overly plentiful throughout. As the map goes on, cells start being plentiful and the map basically tells you to abuse the plasma gun. Unfortunately the challenge never really rises above middling; the last couple 'fights' in particular are underwhelming (just teleporting in some medium-strength enemies far away, with plenty of cover).

Aesthetically, it's texture overload, with tons of clashing colors in pretty much every area of the map, but does a good job of selling the idea of waking up, finding your home/base overrun with demons, clearing them all out and heading back to bed. It all feels very slapdash and 'made up as I went along' but still works despite that as a free-form adventure.

Okay, time to go play Doom 4 now.

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map13 'Bad Morning' - fda here

wow! loved loved loved this. great bizarre architecure, interesting colours, relaxing difficulty (i needed a breather after 10-12)

+ interesting, varied architecture, without being obstructive like map12 was
+ lovely colours
+ good enemy encounters, mixed types, teleporters/turrets/swarms/infight opportunities

- not a memorable MIDI
- some of the colours in the river of blood section were almost clashing/ugly to look at
- a little bit easy on UV - lots of health packs around even if you play sloppy

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Random playthrough of map14 that turned out pretty funny/entertaining. I played the first version already.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/25vlg9qn6lqs8pa/jpcp14_rdwpa_demo.lmp

Random observations:

- I had a soda so I'm hyper. Making things infight for no particular reason is fun. My troll mode is idly strolling through a cluster of monsters. "Hey, how's it going? You too!"

- I forgot some parts of the last playthrough and somehow got stuck outside in a way that practically compelled me to find a secret! Like, I had literally no other choice. LOL.

- I got infinitely tall blocked for a half minute or so after finding a secret. No fault for not anticipating that -- hey, who's going to totally ignore a crowd and then rendezvous after a circuitous journey with the stragglers who just happened to shimmy over to that part of the map -- but now that it's been proven to be possible, it won't hurt to open up an alternate route or something so that it can't happen.

- Fun map overall, nothing of any threat but gives you a lot of space for fun shenanigans. Didn't find that third secret and last monster, wherever they were.

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MAP14 - “G_T_Factory” by toMass

a complex with irregular shapes, not very detailed. doesn't look like a factory. again, enemies are easy to get to infight, especially in the central room where a manc and some chaingunners on a ledge stir up their mates on the ground, while you get a soulsphere and a blue armor. clear the ledge to obtain the red key to the exit.

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Map 13 -- Bad Morning - 100% Kills / 85% Secrets - FDA
Damn, should've had that last secret. Seems so obvious in hindsight.

Reckon this is a good example of what Colin Phipps used to refer to as a "Monster Map"--a sort of big sprawling experimental canvas that a budding WAD author keeps adding more and more to while they learn the ropes, usually resulting in a long strange journey that dabbles in a lot of different isolated ideas, largely discrete from their neighbors both conceptually and thematically, that end up Frankenstein'd together at the end more or less delicately, depending on the doctor's sensibilities. A slightly newer observer of PWADs might just as well remark that it's a particularly 'CChest-y' map, as Doomworld's own CChest series is fraught with freespirited, meandering affairs on this general pattern, especially prior to the fourth/most recent iteration. Interestingly, seems like you don't see these nearly as often as you used to (these days newbie maps seem more likely to tend towards hyper-cramped corridor shooters and such), but I suppose it's a form that will always be with us in some way for as long as folks are still interested in making PWADs.

While this does seem like something of an inexperienced effort overall, I thought it was palatable enough during play, certainly a lot more engaging than map 09 or even the much more strongly-directed map 11 from earlier. Most of the fights are incidental and more or less frontal in nature, but the casually heterogeneous monster composition and ever-shifting landscape of the surreal/abstract setting betokens enough variety in room shapes that you're generally much more free to just sort of do your own thang and wring some mileage out of it that way. No doubt that the thing placement is excessively generous in terms of doling out quality ammo and powerful items such as megaarmor vests and the like.....I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, when maps made like this aim for austerity they have a tendency to become rather joyless, slow-paced affairs unless the author manages things quite skillfully, and I reckon this map is as digestible as it is largely because it's fairly leisurely in bent. On the other hand, the upshot of this way of doing things is that I.....don't really remember any of the fights in particular, save for the final area, which unfortunately seemed to be the weakest part of the map. This teleportation to a wider outdoor setting presented an opportunity for more of a bracing 'projectile heck' scenario if you will, but the knot of skull-hedges or whatever they are that dominates most of the space (which apparently form a letter or other written character, now that I'm reading above) breaks up all of the space and turns it into a basic sheltering affair, which the final wave of reinforcements gets promptly tangled in. Come to think of it, I seem to recall that pretty much every combat space which features any considerable monster presence is somehow partitioned or sanitized with pieces of heavy cover like this, perhaps another factor why few fights are individually memorable. Some of the other repeated conceits of monster/space usage we see throughout the map are fine and dandy, and good habits to develop, ala the persistent re-use/restaffing of the hub with the two card-readers for incidental combat; I reckon the author could do with learning that sometimes you have to pull the rug out from under the player to make him/her feel truly alive.

Aesthetically, well.....it's rather a mess. I couldn't tell if the heavily disjointed visuals on display here were an artistic attempt at conveying Doomguy's mind being stuck somewhere between the waking world and the world of nightmare (I did like the suggestion of narrative at the map's denouement, incidentally), or if they were simply a case of 'kid in a candy store' syndrome. The lack of any kind of coherent/consistent theme is not something I personally find very troubling, but the wild potpourri of competing colors and clean, shiny textures with gritty, grimy dismal textures in close company bothered my eyes a bit, again something which really came to a head in that final area, which is a genuine eyesore by dint of its fullbright floodlighting. I also agree that the BGM track didn't quite seem to fit. Truth be told, though, while I'm comfortable calling the visuals here ugly, they did not really do much to actually lower my opinion of the map. Some sort of mental compartmentalization going on there, I suppose....if one subscribes to the view that maps like this are their own little (sub)genre, as I tend to, I reckon weird, directionless visuals are almost par for the course.

This review sounds really wishy-washy, unfortunately, but that was my impression of the map. There's a mountain of things to be improved on here, but the basic gameplay and approach to pacing is palatable enough, so there's also a good foundation to build on for future maps.

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Map 14 -- G T Factory - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA
Dat BFG secret, tho.

An unpretentious techbase outing which offers a little more depth than it may initially appear to, "G T Factory" uses a fairly modest complement of monsters in concert with a subtle sort of non-linearity to create a brisk little number which makes for a decent Final Doom-style workout without ever really putting the screws to the player (at least not intentionally).

A lot of the interest here seems to stem from the variety of ways in which you can choose to handle the map's first few minutes, where the tacit objective is to make it into the base in one way or another. In my playthrough I went outside and eventually ended up taking the back way in by making a calculated run for a teleporter in the nukage lake which I (correctly) surmised would take me to a different part of the island, but there are several other avenues of approach one can take, each with its own pros and cons. The direct route seemed like the least attractive option from a pistol-start: there are really only a bunch of zombies between you and the latch leading into the factory proper, but they're shotgun-toting zombies, and they're arranged in such a way that you're entrusting an awful lot to RNG if you try to pistol it out with them, hence my snap decision to head outside. Going outside has some potentially inconvenient consequences in that it's not so simple to get back inside (which is not immediately apparent when you first go out there), but doing so nets you an early SSG if you're willing to engage in a bit of post-running, and also leads to some sneakier entrances to the factory, either via the port-run on the west side or via nicely-telegraphed secret entrance on the east side. Running around the map to look at it again before doing this writeup, I also noticed that the zombieman in the guardhouse opposite the one you start in will almost always open the door over there for you provided you make it over there quickly enough, allowing an early bid for the yellow keycard and yet another alternate entrance to the RL room. A little testing shows that this seems to happen so consistently that I strongly suspect it's a clever design feature, rather than an accident or 'bug.'

Once you're done doing the world's worst Solid Snake impersonation, the interior of the factory proper is pretty cut-and-dry, posing a couple of simple standup fights against mixed monster groups once the central storage chamber has opened. Coming in here to clean everything out seems like it could range from grueling to fairly perfunctory depending on how you've played things up to that point (how you accessed the base, which effects how many weapons/items you have, etc.). Pretty basic stuff, but it's a nice pairing with the map's early optionality, and not too out of place in a short map like this. I might suggest using an arch-vile somewhere in the mix on the second wave to spice it up a little bit (perhaps on the upper level), but functional enough as is.

One obvious hitch I did encounter involved a snafu with infinitely-tall actors upon entering the base from the secret eastern elevator, which I had little recourse but to resolve via some impromptu metagamery. I see that rdwpa encountered the same problem, but unlike him, this was my first time seeing that room (that is, the one I was blocked out of), and so didn't even have the opportunity to preclude the matter beforehand with conventional play. Lucky I had the RL, or I'd have been royally fucked, and essentially in a 'deadgame' stalemate position. Suffice to say this is a serious issue, and definitely needs to be addressed, as it all but invalidates one of the niftiest entrances to the base--I reckon the best solution would be to kick out the lone caco (the one I actually bumped up against when I played) and maybe have the other monsters all facing away to the west, giving the player the initiative and playing up the 'secret entrance' angle. A switch on the north or south wall of the alcove I was stuck in which re-actuates the lift might also serve as a reasonable failsafe.

Other than that hangup, I kinda like this one, simple though it is at root, almost like a modern take on one of those old "breach the castle" levels which were a mainstay of PWADs of yesteryear.

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Hah, I missed that the infinitely tall trolls are in the same room as the secret hatch, not in a room once over, because I zipped past them upon first meeting so quickly that I didn't look at any room features. So yeah, that really needs to be fixed.

Strikes me that it's also possible for the player to take a lot of damage earlier on (like, via shotgunners), and get stuck outdoors, needing to traverse the radiation but not being able to. Probably impossible to plan for every possible unfair contingency, but the "fix" is as simple as placing (or moving) a medkit right here: http://i.imgur.com/qRVnyIK.png

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Map14
This level does a fairly good job of creating the impression of a hectic start, but it is really smoke and mirrors: the ‘tron and demons are no real danger. Assuming you stay indoors the first room might provide some lack-of-ammo-based pressure but that seems like all the map really has to offer in terms of actual threat, as opposed to being a paper tiger. This isn’t necessarily bad mind you. A more relaxed level from time to time is just fine by me.

Looks-wise the map is decent but not exceptional. I think the lighting and texturing is a bit too homogenised for it to really pop. There’s a lot of sectors in the western wing to make those ceiling lights for instance, but they make no impression while you’re actually playing because they blend into the overall silver/light grey wash of the area.

That “secret” in the middle of the map needs addressing. I don’t think it is even possible to finish the map without crossing the line that opens it, you’re right there as it does so, and it’s got massive goodies in it.

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rdwpa said:

Hah, I missed that the infinitely tall trolls are in the same room as the secret hatch, not in a room once over, because I zipped past them upon first meeting so quickly that I didn't look at any room features. So yeah, that really needs to be fixed.

Strikes me that it's also possible for the player to take a lot of damage earlier on (like, via shotgunners), and get stuck outdoors, needing to traverse the radiation but not being able to. Probably impossible to plan for every possible unfair contingency, but the "fix" is as simple as placing (or moving) a medkit right here: http://i.imgur.com/qRVnyIK.png

There's also a radsuit out there in a niche below the door leading into the YK's room, but of course it's easy to miss.

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yeah i didnt see the radsuit - perhaps it would be better to have it in plain view?

map14 G_T_Factory fda here

pretty fun little map - i liked the multiple entrances/circular nature of the base

+ fun non-linear gameplay
+ decent enemy mixes
+ easier to find secrets (suits me!)

- slightly dull textures/colours
- one of my least favourite MIDIs
- a bit easy (despite my death on the FDA!)

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MAP 13: Neat hook here as it begins and ends with you in bed. We could interpret that as all of the previous levels being a dream or, alternatively as Doomguy dreaming that he woke up only to come back to his bed and see that he's still asleep a la old cartoons. The main loop of the level itself is a nice clover pattern that serves as a nice restoration of your health and ammo from the previous level and then ends with a nice bit of an arena slaughter. Careful crowd management and selection of weapons is a must, it seems, in this WAD as relying too heavily on the super shotgun or the plasma rifle will see you depleting your ammo fairly often.

MAP 14: Here we see Romero's philosophy about the “horse shoe” shape taken to its logical conclusion. This map is full of them. A fairly easy level with lots of potential for monster infighting for the clever player. It also makes some nice reuse of space by opening up the central combat hub more and more. Looks like the horse shoe design strategy really makes for fun (if maybe too easy) levels. For some reason here I was really expecting a cyberdemon the the main courtyard. So I'm only a little disappointed. Also, I believe this is the first “island base” sort of level in the WAD.

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MAP14 - “G_T_Factory” by toMass - UVMax on second try

Not a huge fan of this one but it's still a solid short techbase map. Unlike most of us I found this level to be quite hard on pistol start which makes some secrets mandatory. Getting the SSG on the outside can be deadly if the arachnotrons are not dead so it requires advancing further. Getting past the blue switch room requires to find the chainsaw secret to kindoff bypass it and hop into the vent to the rocket launcher room, then to the yellow key so you can at last take down the arachnotrons and grab the Soulsphere and the SSG. From there, you can safely clean off the leftover monsters and the map is almost already finished. Definitely not the "incremental progress" type of maps I enjoy the most. The BFG secret is kinda pointless too.

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