The DWmegawad Club plays: Hellbound

[gaspe]

MAP06: This level is clearly inspired by E2M4. Even the style of the combat felt more close to Doom 1 with killing mainly low-tier enemies with shotgun and chaingun, with some tougher foes from Doom 2 as well. Visually this is like a Doom 1 E1/E2 techbase, with the detail style of the wad. I liked the little storage and the infirmary room, the rather suggestive view of the last chamber with the gateway were cool. From the gateway will come out most of the monsters of the map. It isn't a difficult battle but it's fine for its narrative purpose and for being a early map. A good conclusion to the first chapter.

[Demtor]

MAP05 - “Underground”
gzDoom - UV – Continuous

Author's Notes: An old subway themed map, extensively polished up, into almost an entirely new map. The style is
in-line with MAP01 and MAP02. The station and railway parts are only slightly updated, as is the park, but
the rest is almost brand new. Contains city vistas that were put in during the first re-polishing phase.

Lots of fun stuff here. Good action sequences all over the place.

Exploring the subway was enjoyable. I liked the look of the subway entrance and the spider infested park outside the best. The cacodemon warp in attack was a fun way to reuse some of the good looking cityscape and make sure the player looks in that direction. Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but is this their Hellbound debut? Great way to do it, I'd say.

The main tunnel mob kind of aggravated me. If you aren't careful and time it right you'll be stuck up at the top of the stairs with TONS of enemies sitting below. At that point you probably won't have enough ammo to get back down either as most of it is sitting around below and there are A LOT of pinkies to soak up space and ammo. Also hope you switched both stairs on or you'll also be dealing with this. Not fun.

I liked the simple but difficult area behind the YK door. If you didn't use the side door and clear out the chaingunners ahead of time, you're going to have a bad time. This was cute too. Couldn't possibly be a trap down there! No sir.

The exit made me laugh. Takes the waiting imp at the exit room gag to a new level. That's one metal looking exit too. Reminds me of Bioshock for some reason.

[Demtor]

MAP06 - “Gateway Lab”
gzDoom - UV – Continuous

Author's Notes: This map was pretty small and non-interesting, so it was overhauled HEAVILY. I took inspiration from E2M4.
The Ammo Storage and the Med Bay remained in. I varied with the linearity of the gameplay, and finally settled for
allowing players to clear the majority of the map before getting the keys.

It's funny the way this map is laid out with all of the interesting looking hallways. If you miss one key right turn, it is quite possible for a player to go through the whole map and starting the gateway fight without finding the glorious plasma rifle. Which makes the end fight trivial. Even if you run out of plasma, it's a breeze with a double shotgun and tons of running space. Just good bloody fun. Also you can get loaded up with rockets in the ammo storage area. Once again, assuming you didn't miss the door. Non-linear design is fun stuff.

Gateway fights are always fun and this was well staged atmospherically. Sneak peak of the main chamber from the control room and spectator benches from the upper sides was a good move. Opening the RK door is quite a sight. I liked how the walk up to it was staged with all of the dead bodies around and when you get closer, suddenly the lights come on and everything starts pouring through. Awesome. Hot damn, there were a lot of useless shotgun guys stuck in that gateway entrance though.

[Dylan Jarvis]

MAP02:

A romp through a city style map, not to hard but there are quite a few enemies that can snipe the hell out of you at the beginning. There is an invisibility secret early on but I never grabbed it till the end. This map was kind of fun but I still preferred the first map to this. There's also an invincibility secret that requires you to pay attention to details to find. Too bad I already had all the enemies cleared when I went back to get it. I guess it could of helped at the Red Key encounter.

[Spectre01]

DAZZER said:

Also I didnt know Hellbound is an Epsiode based MegaWAD...

It's not but people sometimes refer to episodes by either intermission text after maps 11 and 20 or by death exits. Hellbound has a couple more of those coming up but they're mostly limited to long-range teleporters in the story.

[A2Rob]

Map06 - Gateway Lab
Difficulty - UV
Time - 12:06

We're back with another tech base map. This one sports a large chamber in the middle of the map in between two larger areas of exploration. I like the little lobby area connecting all three areas of the map together, with the nice glowing structure in the middle. As tech bases go, not a lot to really say about this one. There's a med bay and small supply room thrown into the mix, as well as some added nukage. The gateway lab is pretty cool looking though. I liked how you get little views of the lab from a small computer chamber on one side, and an actual viewing booth from the other. The little effect of walking into the portal was a nice touch.

I'd say the difficulty here is much easier than the last map. Despite the large monster count, the majority you'll be fighting are at the end of the level when they start pouring from the gateway lab's main portal. You actually get the plasma rifle in this level, yay. You'll probably want to save it for the final battle, and make sure you use all of it, cause once you go through that portal, it's time for forced pistol start.

[Spectre01]

MAP07 - Woods - Difficulty: Easy

"You enter into the swirling madness of the Gateway, wondering where it will take you. Seems like most of your equipment ended up being someplace else, so you'll have to do with the pistol you found lying on a dead body. According to the nearby computers you are far away from your home city, underneath a small patch of forest. The map shows several interconnecting UAC facilities nearby. You suspect the source of the invasion might be in one of them."

Yeah, it's generally not a good idea to jump into malfunctioning teleporters as this one ended up dumping you nearly naked in the wilderness away from the city. Despite being a map07, this is not another tired Dead Simple homage. There are spiders and Mancs but their tags are used for normal progression purposes. I do like how the first weapon you grab is a Rocket Launcher with a good amount of ammo for it in what looks like an underground garage where someone parked a few Arachnotrons.

Now the bulk of the map is really cool, taking place in a dense and dark forest. As the author mentions, this bares a resemblance to map04 of the original Shadow Warrior, Dark Woods of the Serpent, which is an absolutely legendary map. I actually haven't played anything similar in Doom before and it's certainly a setting that's challenging to get right using just limit removing tools. I think it looks pretty damn good and the winding path beyond the mountain is especially atmospheric.

There are quite a few Imps and Lost Souls lurking in the opening area that leaves you open to plenty of crossfire as the Imps lurk through the dark woods. Less of a problem in ZDoom ports where the sprite trees block their fireballs. There's a secret Plasma Rifle to grab here, but the switch seems to be one time only for some reason, so it's possible to miss out on it if you're standing there scratching yourself. The other 3 secrets are quite obvious, hidden behind brown rock walls in the caverns and behind the building at the end of the forest path. There's another <3cinematic<3 encounter where you have to defend your house from a horde of Hellspawn trying to make their way in. Plenty of ways to handle this fight, including using the window, and you're given a backpack and 3 boxes of shells to get those gosh-darn ruffians off your newly acquired property.

After a bit more caving past the yellow doors, you reach a small outpost with a wooden tower and plenty of Souls and Fatties. Again, hooray for QZDoom for providing extra cover from the fireballs! There's a really neat optional area below the waterfall that serves little practical porpoise aside from teleporting you to a couple rockets in an upper cavern alcove. I do like that mountain down there and it certainly makes the map seem larger and more spacious. The ominous piano midi works great here too. I think it's an IWAD track but I can't be sure.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP07: The Woods

Well, here you are, stripped just about to your skivvies and dumped out of the portal into the arse-end of nowhere. Fortunately for you (not so much for him) a fellow Space Marine met his grisly end not too far from your ejection point, and he's got a rocket launcher for you to put to use against any heavy hitters that might get in the way before you can start to reassemble your arsenal in earnest. It's interesting how the presence of the rocket launcher actually contributes to, rather than diminishes, your sense of vulnerability here - yes, it's powerful, but it can also be just as dangerous to you as it is to your enemies - the demons aren't the only threat the player has to be wary of.

You emerge from your landing spot - some sort of parking structure, with sealed barriers to suggest further spaces or tunnels inaccessible to the player - into a wilderness area of gloomy forests and natural caverns, quite the pleasant departure from the urban and techbase aesthetics shown thus far. The woods provide ample opportunities for imps to scurry about and rain fireballs down on your head from between the trees, but it's an easier area to navigate than the convolutions of the automap might suggest. There's an amusing inversion that comes as you make your way to the south end of the map to retrieve the yellow keep - what begins as an ominous mansion that looms up out of the darkness as though emerging from the pages of a Lovecraft or Poe story instead becomes the player's house, however temporary, which they have to defend against a wave of monstrous reinforcements that come pouring out of the woods. It's a deeply satisfying opportunity to wield your shotgun against demonic home invaders and declare in no uncertain terms, "MY house!"

I feel this is a map that does a really good job of establishing the "chapter break," throwing the player into an environment utterly dissimilar to the gleaming high-tech interiors of MAP06 - the accompanying text file mentions that it was inspired by a Shadow Warrior map, I found it to be reminiscent of Hexen in places, and again there's that definite sense that you're crawling across the pages of a classic tale of terror. In a WAD that, for all its strong points, can tend to feel increasingly repetitive as it nears its final maps, this one goes all-in to keep things feeling fresh and different.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP07 The Woods

And here's that inspirational level where I get my forests from. It's another base at first, apparently with our prot's weapons scattered or something, which ends up in an arachnotron duel just to raise a bridge to the actual woods (and yes all you tag 666/667 haters, those are in effect here).

The initial woods area is a bit cramped, but combat is light. The attention to forest detail is quite lovely, and I continue to look at this one for my forest designs. It's not perfect of course, I mean one particular tree is quite separated from the others and I find that odd (usually what I do is make some green textures to connect a stray one to the rest, design seems a bit more fluid there). One other thing I respect of this, just about every tree is uniquely designed rather than hastily copy-pasted, which is an example I follow. Anyways, apart from that, the good majority of the middle of the map is also in ashwall caves, which are alright I guess, not as cramped as some. The one path to the house with the yellow key has quite a lot of trees going for it along a long and easy path. This path gets more enemies once the key is picked up, but it's rather predictable.

The last few areas combine the cavern aspect with water, my second favorite thing to see in a forest map. The cacodemons come out of weird alcoves with lava ceilings, which is odd, but then it comes back to another forest area, with lost souls and mancubi, which need to be killed for the red key to the exit. So yes, I look back at this one a lot. I guess there are too many of the thing trees, never got into the fact there were that many, but the design of the textured ones is very nice.

[gaspe]

MAP07: The forest theme is nice and rather unique, also the change from the previous levels that feature only city buildings and tech-bases to a natural environment devoid of any sign of human activity sets a nice misterious feel. The map reaches its peak when you arrive at the house lost in the woods, where after picking the key the monsters will siege you there in the biggest battle of the map. Combat in the last area was weird though, the lost souls just keep getting stuck into the various decorative tree when they charge. Pretty nice map overall, does a great job on making you curious to see what lies ahead in the journey.

[cannonball]

MAP05 - “Underground”
There are a couple of larger ambushes here which got me a couple of times, most of the irritation came from running out of ammo and being stuck with dozens of demons still lurking around the main area. Visual again are pretty neat, especially the outdoor section looking onto the destroy skyscrapers in the distance.
Overall this needed something a little meatier than the ssg to clear the main hordes, again this might have been satisfied if I had found all 3 of the secrets except for the obvious rocket launcher one.
What is up with this wad and pointless exit room encounters? 32 imps stuffed into this one which provides no threat and just wastes around a 1 minute of heavy ssg work.

[Demtor]

MAP07 - “Woods”
gzDoom - UV – Continuous

For some reason I didn't expect a forced pistol start in this WAD. Quite a surprise.

The story takes quite a turn with a blind jump through a portal. Figured I'd end up in hell but, not this time. Apparently the computers nearby are working. Convenient. Good thing they weren't password protected!

Time to find more UAC bases, I guess. But first, have to get through... is that a forest back there??




Cool!! I never played Shadow Warrior but I did get a good Quake1 Ep2 vibe from the darker areas.




Overall I felt a bigger Thief 1/2 feel here. Thanks in part to my using the 'footsteps_zan.pk3' mod which is where all the sounds come from. (Thinking back, I would've loved to double barrel that trickster God and some of his minions back in the day! Grrr.)

Lots of really cool looking places here. Always good to have a haunting full moon around. Though I would've preferred a starry night sky texture of some sort as opposed to the same old gray cloudy night sky that's been a bit over used at this point.

The secret in the hollow tree was a great way to regain the precious plasma rifle. I liked how the caves are set up with multiple entrances to allow for sneaking up on enemies. Happened a few times depending on if you found the connecting secret walls or not. (More Thief themes there) I also enjoyed the look of the caves here in contrast to the outer areas. Especially the bridge over lava.

The house section was kind of weird, I thought. The design and look of it made it out to be this fancy ornate building but inside it's a tiny two roomed affair and not much to it besides a few beds and book cases. There should have been a little bit more to it I think. Maybe it would've worked better to have just a rinky dink little cabin instead. *shrug*

It was great to be able to follow the water flow from the caves to the last section with the lost souls and manc around the watchtower. Depending on your approach you could either come at it from the front or stick to the walls above and circle around back. The different approaches here helped again to give me that Thief feel. Always good to have options in a map.

As much as I enjoyed it visually, that last area really pissed me off. You really don't see those two enemies paired together too often so the combined mechanics of their motion and the overall patterns of attack really threw me off my game. To make things worse I kept tripping over shrubs and shit trying to dive behind cover. Gah! Half the time I'd be getting my ass chomped on while looking down trying to figure out what's tripping me up before getting fried by a cannon blast. Wooof.

[A2Rob]

Map07 - The Woods
Difficulty - UV
Time - 13:22

Well this is a pleasant surprise. We get to have a nice little stroll through a forestry level. Too bad it's incredibly dark here.

Intro to the level has a nice feel to it. Rising from the teleporter you just came from, there's a coll little underground section before the elevator into the main part of the map. The woods itself looks really nice, I never you you could make forestry like this using linedefs. There's a neat cave section, followed by a narrow walk to an ominous house in the middle of the woods. The final area has some pretty cool visuals in it as well, including a small river and what appears to be an observation post. I can definitely see the inspiration from Shadow Warrior here.

Level starts off pretty simple, considering were back to just a pistol now. We do, however, immediately get a rocket launcher (comes in handy for those arachnotrons). I wasn't joking about the darkness, it was actually quite hard to spot those imps in the beginning forestry area. This map has quite a lot of narrow and claustrophobic areas, especially in the caves. Fun times to be had when there's hell knights and cacodemons on the prowl. The little standoff at the house was also a highlight of this map for me. Final area was a bit odd though, I dunno, fighting lost souls and mancubi simultaneously just doesn't do it for me. At least the mancubus projectiles were blocked by various tree props in the areas, making it easy for me to just bait the lost souls into the open for me to kill. I did appreciate the level throwing cloaked demons into the mix.

[DAZZER]

MAP07: The Woods
Difficulty - UV
Time - 11:51

I think this is my favourite Level until now. At the beginning you ask yourself why this Map is called like that... But when I reach that outside area i was realy surprised. I love that long walk through the woods cause it realy feels like your in a forest. And that House at the End is just brilliant xD Not sure if its an Evil Dead reference with that chainsaw in it :D

[raymoohawk]

i kinda wish the maps were not so dark. most everything is so uniformly dark. specters are almost imposible to see

[cannonball]

MAP06 - “Gateway Lab”
The E2M4 vibe is always a plus for me, in the end a lot of the combat is very incidental up to the final fight at the gateway, alas the fight was a little slow and too easy, there are probably a lot of ways where you can spice things up a little for this.

MAP07 - “Woods”
Some great usage of the natural rock textures here to create an almost believable forest environment, probably the best visuals so far, the atmosphere and music choice is pretty spot on too. Gameplay again was very so-so in execution, the usage of the 666/667 tags feels natural so at least it isn't a straight up dead simple clone.

[Spectre01]

raymoohawk said:

i kinda wish the maps were not so dark. most everything is so uniformly dark. specters are almost imposible to see

Are you using Software Mode? In GL/QZDoom with 'Bright' lighting mode the maps are still dark and atmospheric but the visibility is fine for me.

[Pirx]

MAP04 - “Processing Plant”

from the testing chambers you enter the sewers, where all the crap in the canal came from. i like having a story in a doom megawad, and maps being thematically joint somehow. it's your good old sewers map, with several chaingunners right at the start. luckily one can grab the first gunner's weapon, and there's also a secret ssg nearby. the map is obviously inspired by doom3, as seen in the introduction of the mancubus (a nukage-filled room) and the lost souls appear in a room with a high ceiling, coming from above. and then there's the hell sequence (with the hint being the glowing "eyes" behind the red key, if that's correct), it just suffers a bit from looking straight and angled, like the rest of the map, but still entertaining overall.



MAP05 - “Underground”

you reach a subway station, and after some skirmishes around entry points there's where the first bigger fight takes place: a hell portal opens at the end of some railway tracks, spewing a mob of light / middleweights (who happily start infighting (you can lead them around the tracks) or fall to your rockets, as there's a launcher with several crates somewhere. cool view of the building around in flames. the music fits perfectly. the end is a bit less intuitive, first there's this room with the elevator from "the crusher", then backtrack to the start and hilariously kill some imps. and a possible gameplay flaw: i got stuck on the first try as in demtor's pictures. sure, if you have the rocket launcher already, it's very easy to cheese from above.



MAP06 - “Gateway Lab”

inspired by e2m4, it has a similar eerie look with the compblue walls and paths over nukage, plus the wormhole music that complements it well. it's a bigger uac facility with sections like an infirmary, an armory, a server room (or what the blue room with the plasma gun is supposed to be) and, the best part, the vip spectator room over the gateway lab. you're free to choose your path through the map, but in the end, it's get the red key when you have the blue key already and so on. the last flood of monsters out of the gateway is cannon fodder for what guns you (should) have acquired until then, but nevertheless entertaining how the keep pouring out of the gateway until it's empty, and, as you enter it, the first episode ends... i'm impressed so far, the author has done a good job of creating a story with convincing places, as far as the doom engine allows.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 07 -- The Woods - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
As is customary: Not a Dead Simple map, +1000 bonus points. The map from Shadow Warrior referenced as a primary inspiration for this map in the textfile is presumably "Dark Woods of the Serpent", the closer from that game's shareware episode, incidentally, though this influence appears to be strictly thematic in nature (or maybe there are some actual homages that went over my head, it's been ages since I played Shadow Warrior). The hike through the woods to the remote lodge, followed by a spate of intensified bloodletting, which serves as the level's conceptual centerpiece immediately reminded me of a broadly similar idea encountered in "Hobb's End Horror" from Hellcore 2.0; this is certainly a WAD to look into for those fond of Hellbound itself, as there is no other mapset I can think of which more closely seems to share its overall artistic/design sensibilities.

I reckon this level does a very credible job of depicting a thick old-growth forest locale, actually something of a humble triumph, that, in that a natural forest/glade setting is generally one that idtech1 is profoundly unsuited to, especially in the absence of purpose-specific custom assets. Here, rather than trying to laboriously carve a copse out of sectors ala the rather goofy-looking freestanding trees from the park in map 05, Z86 has wisely and skillfully opted for a more stylized depiction of a forest to which the engine is more amenable, using a generalized ceiling shrouded in heavy gloom to serve as a forest canopy, and then rendering old-growth trees as a disorderly jumble of wooden trunks (read: columns) stretching up indefinitely to meet them. The playspace is a series of winding, organic paths divided by hillocks tall enough to segment the different routes while being short enough to allow long lines of sight, then clouded and cluttered by the aforementioned great-trees and many carefully arranged prop trees/bushes and so forth, as well as the pervasive darkness. These canopy-covered areas are then contrasted with a handful of large open-sky areas cut with creeks and pools and the like on the one hand, and with full-on cave areas in the inner reaches, which the author uses as a platform for including more height-varied geometry than would be convenient in the forest proper. If this all sounds like a bit of an illusion or a cheat, that's because that's precisely what it is; but I maintain that this is a very smart/practical way of tackling a very technically awkward theme in the engine, and this level currently stands as one of the most credible 'forests' I've seen in many years of playing PWADs, especially considering it relies only on stock assets.

Dense dark glades are not terribly suited to presentations of vista or scale or to movie-set detailing of the sort that has bolstered previous levels, of course, but there's still a strong sense of atmosphere and the cinematic here, if perhaps a bit subtler. Diegetically, one interesting little wrinkle is the formally unexplained presence of sinister lava-burrows and tunnels festering in the heart of the forest, which to me read like an interpretation of the Deimos/Shores of Hell theme adjusted for the unorthodox outdoor setting--if in traditional techbase settings this often takes the form of huge masses of liver pâté and beef ragu spilling out of air vents and glowering likenesses of Mephistopheles blazoned on the walls of public restrooms and the like, here's it's something like a slow-burning fire of corruption gradually and clandestinely growing in the shelter of the thicket, with the plants beginning to take on more of a desiccated and twisted look as the region's sickness deepens. The conspicuously long walk to the remote lodge along a spooky torchlit path also feels very directed and makes a good showing of turning a simple box-building into something of a credible reveal, though real sticklers for verisimilitude will quickly note that the building's implied floorplan as communicated by its exterior makes no sense in the context of what's found inside (moreso than usual for Doom buildings, I mean). The equally long walk back, drenched in bloodshed as it is, is a satisfying followup to the earlier buildup.

On that note, gameplay here, it must be said, is at heart really more of the same as what we've seen in the past few maps, including another mono-directional 'torrent of evil' fight at the midpoint of progression, closing the lodge sequence. The main difference in inflection elides from the pistol-start, which the majority of players will experience due to the death-exit on map 06 (apparently the mechanism fails to adequately account for the reduced damage those selecting the lowest skill level enjoy, though I suppose there's a chance this may actually be intentional), which places the RL as the first primary weapon before transitioning to buckshot going into the forest proper--no chaingun in sight, and a (largely aesthetic) chainsaw found later on in the lodge. Map 07 special tags are used in an unobtrusive way at the end of the level, tasking the player to kill a handful of mancubi carousing through a glade lousy with lost souls (and possibly others, depending on one's point of ingress) as a rite of passage for gaining the red key. To most of us I reckon the mechanism here's quite obvious, though I feel it's implemented casually enough not to feel like it's untowardly beating the thoroughly dead horse that is Sandy's map 07.

Like many of the other levels, the overall impression of the action here is that it's pleasingly bloody leisure/low pressure stuff, if admittedly a bit mindless; a certain naivete in expectation and an arguable lack of self-awareness as regards pacing in what is a long set full of long maps probably being the most notable drawbacks. For example, I felt that the initial walk to the lodge would've been much better served in being almost entirely monster-free (instead you face a steady series of harmless low-tier monsters) as an opportunity to vary pace while cutting filler and serving what seems to be the level's intended overall atmosphere. Likewise, the mancubi/lost soul fight at the end pretty obviously assumes certain simulation behaviors native to ports keyed beyond the set's avowed limit-removing design spec; in base settings the lost souls here are almost entirely meaningless because their movement is restricted so much by the welter of infinitely-tall prop objects. Z86 does more or less communicate in the textfile that using the 'classic' set of simulation affordances is not really the intended/ideal way of experiencing the mapset, but the presence of the assumption in the design's a mite telling nonetheless, and it's an issue that can emerge more noticeably in certain forthcoming levels.

Nevertheless, my overall impression is again positive, of a non-standard atmospheric opener with a novel thematic diversion to kick off the second episode.

[Demtor]

Demon of the Well said:

Hellcore 2.0; this is certainly a WAD to look into for those fond of Hellbound itself, as there is no other mapset I can think of which more closely seems to share its overall artistic/design sensibilities.

Thanks for the suggestion! Played through about half of it now. Lots of interesting ideas that make for a very unique experience.

[Spectre01]

MAP08 - Military Depot - Difficulty: Medium

"You spot the UAC base outside the woods. It seems to be locked down tightly and guarded by hellspawn, but you saw an alternate entry: it has a sewage drain on the side. In fact that drain can lead you closer to the major UAC base you saw on the map. Better clear this place out quick, and unlock the other end of that drain pipe."

Continuing from the same spot where the previous map ended, we make our way to a UAC military base nestled in the mountains. There's a Mastermind behind the gate in the outdoor crate storage area that's not difficult to take out using some cover. The Chaingunners on the tower are probably a bigger threat if you don't notice them through the vines while coming out of the tunnel. Obvious SSG secret there too that I was stupid enough to miss. The outdoor section of the base is entirely optional but has a Rocket Launcher and a Blue Armour that can be grabbed with a slightly tricky jump off the tower lift.

This is the first of the larger maps in the wad and took me nearly 40 minutes to clear. The inside of the depot is quite spacious and there are some very cool looking rooms like the power reactor and the red key intersection. Oh, and this tech hallway right here.

While still within the "medium" difficulty described in the text file, there are some very dangerous groups of hitscanners, more so than any previous map, that can easily perforate your ass if you aren't careful. I lost a ton of health to them, especially in the overgrown hallway where they hide behind weaponized midtextures. The teleporting Baron was amusing too. As always, there's plenty of great detailing work and sense of realism in the design of the base and there's quite a bit of choice when it comes to exploring the place. That midi is probably my least favourite though and has a rather annoying section in it.

[Demon of the Well]

Demtor said:

Thanks for the suggestion! Played through about half of it now. Lots of interesting ideas that make for a very unique experience.

Yes, there's not much out there quite like it, which as one can perhaps surmise means it has always been something of a love it/hate it proposition for most players. I don't believe the authors ever made any other maps of significance (though IIRC at least one of them was heavily involved in the development of the port "Risen3D"), unfortunately, though HC 2.0 is itself something distilled from the failed megaWAD project Hellcore, which eventually saw a sort of abortive release of its own so that its grieving parents might reach closure. Can't really recommend that one, myself, though.

Map 08 -- Military Depot - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
A relatively nondescript shipping/storage facility squatting at the edge of the forest, the titular Depot is a place we visit primarily because it happens to border on part of toxic waste disposal system, which is apparently our big 'in' to infiltrating critical UAC installations further down the line. Someone else must've realized this, for the facility is tightly barred and barricaded from inside, and the main power has been shut off in order to stall access to the red security card, which in turn grants access to the yellow card and thus to the toxic sewer's maintenance entrance. Fat lot of good all of that did, of course, as the place is crawling with hellspawn, same as everywhere else we've been.

At 299 monsters on UV, this is one of the more monster-dense maps we've seen thus far (like many of the maps in the earlier part of the game, it's not actually very long once you know where you're going), and it seems like it was consciously made as more of a combat-focused entry, interesting in that Z86 apparently considered it nearly unsalvageable at one point during the project's "reworking" phase. In contrast to the monster-torrent fights which were a shared feature of the previous three maps, here the author has opted for more densely-packed incidental placement occasionally developing into some surprisingly pronounced close range bumrushes, as in the garage-sized closet full of evil which bursts forth to protect the blue key by attempting to corner you in the access switch's room. Threats from more than one angle and designed crossfires are also more of an element here, though many of these scenarios are admittedly of a rather rudimentary sort (i.e. accessing a large/long hallway through a door somewhere in its middle stretch, inviting monsters to swarm you from both sides as soon as you show your face). Also notable is the appearance of the set's first spider mastermind as a sort of aberrant watchdog guarding the freightyard, a designed zombie-slaughter for which the second blursphere has been specially placed, and a brief 'miniboss' encounter with a rapidly phasing Baron of Hell protecting the YK, which seems to borrow a page straight out of Malcom Sailor's book (albeit heavily abridged). The latter is quite brief (though perhaps deceptively troublesome for players who've yet to learn some of the simple tricks for dealing with such encounters), but nevertheless notable as a bit of design where encounter mechanics and choreography are at the forefront of the design.

As is often the case to some extent with mapsets characterized by more straightforward or narratively-minded combat, to some degree it's up to the player to make the most of what's on offer if simply mowing down droves of monsters from the relative stability of thresholds is wearing thin (and this is one way in which most of these encounters can be handled, to whit, given enough stubbornness and elbow-grease). The spider mastermind, for example, can be plinked to death from outside using one of the fenceposts as a shield, or just as easily given the same handling using one of the crates in his yard. Approached with more inventiveness (which is again something much more likely to behoove one from pistol-start, especially if the random SSG-closet secret early on is missed), the spider can be turned against the base's inhabitants by quickly opening the two checkpoint shutters and goading the monsters into a heated crossfire. Likewise, the aforementioned BK guardians can be fled from and dragged a considerable distance into other parts of the map. I think it would be disingenuous to try and claim that this sort of stuff (or at least a large portion of it) was consciously designed into the maps' gameplay, mind you. Quite the contrary, in fact, as there are again a few monster-blocking lines in some strange places which generally have very little bearing on straight fights prosecuted at the time/place of first encounter but which can seriously impact the ability of some encounters to trickle/spread through the base, limiting some offbeat forms of flexibility/variability that might otherwise exist. Nevertheless, considerable opportunities for directing/customizing one's own action scenes do exist in many of these maps, which I think generally speaks fairly well of layout design and structural character. Here, Z86 actively strove for non-linearity by allowing the player to roam much of the base sans keys and by giving many major areas more than one access point; it's a cheap 'n cheerful solution to the problem of repetitiveness in combat design, but it often pays dividends nonetheless.

[gaspe]

MAP08: Interesting techbase level, I liked the large use of the vines textures that was done here. I wonder if the map initially was inspired by TNT-MAP14. The midi is the same, there's a mastermind fight in a courtyard near the start, and at one point there's a 64 wide passage with pipes and imps like the secret corridors of Steel Works. Probably these are coincidences but I found them funny somehow when I noticed them. The map is packed with lots of hitscanners. The gameplay is allright for the most but in the blue key section and in the areas after the blue key doors the things started to get monotonous. I get it that in some moments large groups of monsters have a stronger effect for narrative purposes but I feel that I'm starting to see a trend of quantity over quality in the monster placements and I feel that many times putting less monsters would have been better for the flow and even the atmosphere. But I'll see how the things will be in the future.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP08 Military Depo

It's bad enough to not cross a t, it's worse to forget it all together. Joking aside though, this is quite a hasty retreat from the woods, although the first stretch of the map is woods, it goes back to the base here. You know, the way Hellbound's settings go is pretty intriguing up until we reach the hell levels around MAP20 or so, as it seems to flip-flop between earth-based settings to base settings (that are assumbly on earth). Not that I'd compain though, but it's something to note.

Quite the sprawler as far as base layouts go, with some pre-nukage wading just to enter, as most sections are blocked off. Going through the backdoor of things and finding the switches to open things up is pretty standard by now. The blue key is to the north, and other blue stuff resides in the south. The layout of the base is somewhat nonlinear, yet it confuses me each time. Some highlights here are the hitscanner-filled sections in the southeast as well as the lost souls being the traditional vent enemy. After figuring out the red key, everything is pretty straightforward though. The combat is in fact getting tougher, the small monsters are populating the places more, and the big ones are starting to show more as well.

[Demtor]

MAP08 - “Military Depot”
gzDoom - UV – Continuous

Pretty strange tech base with it's wide array of odd designs, interesting looks and varying styles of moving hallways and darkened corridors. From the outside, it looks just like a regular tech back stuck deep in a forest but once you get inside, it reveals itself to be a a weird assortment of visuals. These tech bases are all pretty stellar so far IMO.

I liked that the vines and the tech textures combined to almost create a feeling of conflict between nature and technology. As if the base was under threat from the brooding forest outside and may soon be overrun with growth.

Lots of good combat too. finally seeing a little bit of teeth here and there. Getting a couple barons to throw down on a mastermind, was fun.

Is jumping frowned upon in this WAD if mouselook is okay? I could not for the life of me figure out how to get that blue armor out front without hopping up from one box to the next.

[cannonball]

MAP08 - “Military Depot”
Some very obnoxious usage of hitscanners here, sometimes this is a little over-bearing on the player, especially on route to the red key where combined with the walk through vines leads to a rather nasty set up which to be honest I wasn't fond off, especially as the blur sphere offered very little support considering the vast number of hitscanners here. Again the visuals and atmosphere are the highlight here but again some encounters were very hit and miss, the fore-mentioned usage of hitscan enemies and that yellow key baron (wow).

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP08: Military Depot

This one seems to go out of its way to mix things up and present variety in its environments, encounters, and pacing, from the early pitched battle against the Spider Mastermind in the yard of the depot and its various minions in the cavernous warehouse just beyond, to cautious tunnel-crawling gameplay through progressively narrower passages until you're wriggling your way through the depot's ventilation system to reach otherwise sealed sectors. It's certainly atmospheric, with several sections overgrown with brown vines - it's a functioning facility, not one abandoned to the ravages of time and partially reclaimed by nature, so instead this hints at a growing corruption that infests the base and nearby structures. We're also introduced to one element of Hellbound's visual language - glowing red bars lowered in front of a door indicate that it's sealed and must be opened elsewhere. While progression ultimately has to occur in a linear fashion (blue, red, and yellow keys, in order) a significant part of the map's total area can be explored before any keys are collected or used, and there are quite a few different routes through the complex, giving the player the opportunity to fight on their own terms or outmanoeuvre certain groups of enemies entirely. It feels like thought has primarily gone into the ebb and flow of the map as a whole rather than the balance of any particular encounter, and the player is encouraged to upset what balance their is and rewrite the scenario in their own favour.

[raymoohawk]

rileymartin said:

Are you using Software Mode? In GL/QZDoom with 'Bright' lighting mode the maps are still dark and atmospheric but the visibility is fine for me.

i am using software. i dont like the lack of sprite overdraw in hardware

[Demon of the Well]

Demtor said:

Is jumping frowned upon in this WAD if mouselook is okay? I could not for the life of me figure out how to get that blue armor out front without hopping up from one box to the next.

I'm 99% certain that neither jumping nor crouching are intended or accounted for in the design. It looks like some parts of progression in some maps can break if you jump (in map 09, which I just played, for example), and I've yet to encounter any secrets that require anything other than standard movement. The blue armor in map 08 you're talking about, for example, can be leaped to (by 'leap' I mean a traditional Doom 'aimed fall', that is) from the lift up into the little guard tower; trick is you have to wait for the lift to cycle to the top with you on it first, as the motion sensor which causes it to drop if you try to get a run-up first removes too much distance from your leap.

Map 09 -- Disposal Facility - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Another toxin-themed level, here the pools of pernicious fluid factor much more heavily into play and progression than in map 04 from earlier, where the nukage served a primarily cosmetic purpose. The idea here is to wend one's way through a polluted canyon, into and through the dank, labyrinthine network of pipes and channels of the monitoring station, and finally out through the tail end where the disposal network joins up with a more mundane public sewer system in a remote gorge. For the first time, radsuits are a crucial survival tool here (most of the waste carries a 10% or even 20% damage rate), and while there are enough of them conveniently placed to see you through, waffling about too much or simply squandering them can lead to much hardship, if not to a full-on stalemate (in the absence of the first/secret soulsphere, healing supplies are fairly scarce). Interestingly, in line with the earlier nukage-themed map, "Disposal Facility" also contains a second of the so-called 'Hell-trips', which again is implemented in a charmingly playful way that clearly references the first instance but with a bit of a different spin--suffice to say that if the RK sequence seemed a little too good to be true, that's precisely because it is. Notice that the visual omen of what's about to happen, while similar in form to that presaging the earlier instance, is more pronounced this time, as though Hell wants you to experience a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach before enduring the forthcoming nightmarish sideslip.

Again, the environmental theme/concept and the attendant gameplay sequences (nukage-running, etc.) are the source of most of the level's character. In action terms, this level features something of generally slower, herky-jerky pace, particularly in contrast with the more action-oriented map 08 just prior; again, it's not a hard map, but there's more of a 'survival' flavor to proceedings, using a smaller monstercount than most of the maps on either side of it in the running order and something of a tighter ammo/supply balance throughout (though bullet stocks noticeably snowball out of control in the lategoing for some reason). From pistol-start, trying to methodically clear out all of the perched monsters in the initial canyon area can leave you mostly bereft of shells and bullets, which in turn seems intended to encourage you to plunge into the sinkhole junction (which happens to be a cacodemon nest); up until you reach the warehouse segment, you might well find yourself living moment-to-moment from dropped shotguns and loose clips, particularly if you miss the little switchback detour (which also opens a shortcut back to the level's start point) where the RL is found--it's visually telegraphed from mapstart, but in this case the set's characteristic darkness make it very easy to miss. Depending on how you play the Hell-trip segment after snagging the red keycard, this relative austerity could well continue until the end of the map, especially if you again insist on trying to clear out the many perched revenants and imps at the mouth of the northern gorge before proceeding (the author will obligingly sic them on you by lowering them to ground level to chase you into the final area if you take a more practical approach and forge ahead past them, take note--ultimately they can be killed much more efficiently that way).

The Hell-trip here works better than the one from map 04, IMO, by the by. It's actually very similar in setup--an unabashedly linear course with a teleporter leading back to earthly reality at the end of it--but visually it acquits itself somewhat better (while remaining firmly in the off-the-wall abstract/Inferno stylistic camp) and features a more interesting fight concept, simple though it is. This particular pocket dimension is positively swarming with lost souls, and given that you are limited to the narrow railed tracks above a sea of fire, once they start all zooming around in unison the situation can get quite chaotic and surprisingly dangerous. Trying to methodically kill them all off from a given point also represents a serious drain on ammo reserves. The more entertaining way to handle this situation (also the intended way in this case, I suspect) is to simply ignore the souls while running the track at top speed, swatting them out of your way with the SSG as need be, until you hit the teleporter at the end, which dumps you into a disorienting ambush scenario in a part of the disposal facility you've not seen yet. Amusingly, the Baron at the end of the Hell-trip track (and likely a few of the souls) can actually follow you back into our reality as a last little stinger. Careful in here, it looks like the pits around the crushing platforms are inescapable, which in this case reads more like an oversight than a design decision (there is even a teleporter or two out of the brimstone below in the actual Hell portion of the Hell-trip, after all).

This (potentially) more uptempo sequence makes for a pleasing diversion in what is, generally speaking, a somewhat slow-paced and admittedly rather dry map. The more austere balance plus many of the monsters being placed as snipers or as resource expenditures leads to the action feeling stilted at times, though some may find this a welcome departure from the incidental room/hallway-clearing of previous maps. Certain areas or ideas also seem underutilized, particularly the large crate warehouse with its inexplicable 'secret' V-sphere--it's an ominous-looking area, and it seems like something big is bound to happen here at some point, but that point never really arrives. Pain elementals eventually make their mapset debut in this room, granted, but there are only three of them, and the timing + position of their appearance means that 95% of players will simply and easily camp them out without a second thought. I suppose one could argue that this is an intentional example of the sort of atmospheric downtime or misdirection that I was calling for during the initial hike to the lodge in map 07, but, eh......just doesn't feel right to me in this case.

[A2Rob]

Map08 - Military Depot
Difficulty - UV
Time - 17:29

We get some more tech base, this time mixed with the forestry theme of the last map. The outside area of the base is really impressive, with large bars walling you off from the depots entrance, an over watch tower, and a small supply crate area. I like the little waste tunnel you have to run to in the beginning to avoid the SM. The inside is pretty awesome too, lots of use out of the vines texture, and small roadway leading deeper into the base. The rest of the indoor areas are pretty standard, but well detailed. My favorite little nuance in this map are the underground venting shafts.

The opening area throws a lot at you - a mancubus posted outside, chain gunners pitched on top of a tower, and a spider mastermind. I actually got the mancubus to in fight with the chain gunners (chain gunners won). Running past the mastermind is pretty easy, and if you have the secret plasma gun from the last level, he should be easy to dispatch. Getting the armor outside using the lift is a little tricky. I'd say the most dangerous part of this map is the amount of hit scan enemies populating the depot, especially in a later part of the level where several vine linedefs help camouflage them from your line of sight (there's an invisibility sphere in a room next to the blue dooe once your back inside the depot, which makes the room filled with hit scanners a little less stressful. The final corridor had this weird teleporting baron, not sure what that was all about, he was pretty easy to defeat.