20 Monsters Community Project [RELEASED]

[Lud]

(Graphic by Lud.)

Cross-post from ZDoom thread.

===Project Staff===
Leader: Lud
Co-leaders: Tapwave, BillGuy
Top guns: leodoom85, Zero X. Diamond, FishyClockwork
Honorable mentions: Vostyok, unRyker
Village idiot: SoulCircle

Trailers

Spoiler

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By leodoom85.
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By Lud.
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By unRyker.
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By unRyker.
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Slots:
MAP01: leodoom85 (Finished)
MAP02: lil'devil (Finished)
MAP03: Caligari87 (Finished)
MAP04: Nevander (Finished)
MAP05: ZioMcCall (Finished)
MAP06: Jimmy (Finished)
MAP07: Lud (Finished)
MAP08: isaacpop23 (Finished)
MAP09: Kinsie (Finished)
MAP10: Mor'Ladim (Finished)
MAP11: Vostyok (Finished)
MAP12: Voltcom9 (Finished)
MAP13: BillGuy (Finished)
MAP14: FishyClockwork (Finished)
MAP15: Tapwave (Finished)
MAP16: Zero X. Diamond (Finished)
MAP17: NAG (Finished)
MAP18: SoulCircle (Finished)
MAP19: UnTrustable (Finished)
MAP20: Gothic (Finished)
MAP21: Zero X. Diamond (Finished)
MAP22: UnTrustable (Finished)
MAP23: Titan314 (Finished)
MAP24: Luigi2600 (Finished)
MAP25: Vostyok (Finished)
MAP26: Deviluke Roy / unRyker (Finished)
MAP27: Janus3003 (Finished)
MAP28: Voltcom9 (Finished)
MAP29: Crazy Toni (Finished)
MAP30: unRyker (Finished)
MAP31: Tapwave (Finished)
MAP32: DrPyspy (Finished)
MAP33: Sgt. Shivers (Finished)
MAP34: BillGuy (Finished)
MAP35: FishyClockwork (Finished)
MAP36: leodoom85 (Finished)
MAP37: BillGuy (Finished)
MAP38: leodoom85 (Finished)
MAP39: lwks (Finished)
MAP40: BillGuy / leodoom85 / Tapwave / Lud (Finished)
MAP41: Zero X. Diamond (Finished)
MAP42: Zero X. Diamond (Finished)

DOWNLOAD: I am here! Click me! (GZDoom 2.2.0 or better is recommended. May not be compatible with ZDoom 2.8.1 due to use of advanced features! Dev builds of either should work fine, though!

[Lud]

Doubleposting to say that the project was released on the 23rd of December 2016 and this thread was cross-posted here after several users asked me to do so. Well, here it is.

[Memfis]

What's up with the cacodemon pain SFX in that last vid? :o Sounds like a woman or something.

[Lud]

Not part of the mapset. Probably video author using weapon sounds patch.

[baja blast rd.]

Early post in that thread:

Allowed enemies:
- Zombieman
- Shotgunguy
- Chaingunner
- Imp
- Demon/Spectre
- Lost Soul
- Cacodemon

Is this for real, or did the requirements get more lax later. I honestly find it silly that the roster is limited to this but there are STEALTH monsters. O_o

Anyway, Jimmy's map was probably the only one out of the first seven I played that didn't feel like it could have been substantially improved by adding either more monsters or an expanded bestiary. It staked out an identity that would fit within the restrictions, and executed it well, and so any expansion would detract from that. Nevander's was enjoyable because of an SSG, and I kind of dug the weirdness. Your arena map was fun for what it was but ultimately just a vignette, held back by the monster restrictions.

The limitation is a fundamentally dull one and thus takes a lot of creativity to pull off, I think. Jimmy's map was a big success, as mentioned, but most of these maps so far have largely come off as very conventional maps that just happen to focus around pistol and shotgun gameplay with a really low monster count and those particular monsters, like snippets of dull map01s of miscellaneous mapsets. Not sure if I'll play on, but if I do I'd hope for a mix of a) inventive concepts like Jimmy's; b) maps like Nevander's that realize that, hey, fighting these monsters with the pistol or shotgun or maybe the chaingun in conventional setups can never really be challenging, and just decide to give out a half-decent weapon (i.e. SSG or better) and make it short and snappy and fun instead.

This post later in that thread is sort of what I expected:

I think the original spirit of the challenge, though I think we are all pretty aware of this, was to prove you can make a map without legions of high-tier monsters, some dehacked into nintendo-hard levels, and still make a map that is fun and challenging.

Misguided, imo. You don't have really need to design a map with twenty of the lowest-tier monsters to "prove" this. A conventional map with around 50-300 monsters would do easily. And if the project keeps up this way, ironically it will fail to demonstrate its thesis, because most of these maps have been neither fun nor challenging.

[Lud]

Perhaps I shouldn't have deleted the sentence in the OP which explains why the project has these limitations and adds some context.

Long story short, wildweasel challenged ztktx to make a map with no more than 20 monsters and nothing stronger than a Caco. Of course, ztktx couldn't be arsed to do that, but I decided it'd be a cool idea to do a community project revolving around that. The whole mapset doesn't really pack many interesting fights, but we at least tried to pull off an ok storyline for the end level. It's not really too creative, but I assure you that I have a far better idea for the sequel of the project, whenever that is.

[Suitepee]

I wonder what wad this was inspired by......

May check this out sometime.

[Spectre01]

These limitation projects are getting smaller and smaller. Next thing you know people are making 64x64 rooms with a single Zombieman in them. Oh wait...