The DWmegawad Club plays: TNT: Revilution

[AD_79]

Just stopping by to say that I'm really happy to see people enjoying 02. It was a fun map to build :)

[Steve D]

dobu gabu maru said:

Stop what you're doing and play Violence. Seriously. It's one of my favorite releases from 2015.

Downloaded. Now, I wait for the sun to go down, since it's so bright outside I can't possibly play Doom. But the time is coming, and thanks in advance for the tip.

[rehelekretep]

rdwpa said:

There's something kinetically off about fighting them with the shotgun/chaingun to me. It just feels wrong. Something about the pellet range being so small and the revenant being so skinny, like the mere fact that it's taking damage doesn't make sense. But I've warmed up to it recently.

youve now ruined sg/cg v revs even more rdwpa D:<

[Jayextee]

Map02 - Geothermal
Deaths: 0

So my early impressions of this mapset are now thus: it's fucking gorgeous. I may be a tad biased because the 'METAL2' set of textures are my favourite in Doom 2, and they work so well with the custom assets here; I'm not really a fan of the 'clash' I witness often when custom textures meet stock ones. Here, it works. Totally.

The layout of this map is a most-pleasing runaround. Simple shooting, which is great for me and my controller usage (I'm unaccustomed, but as I say I'm playing Doom like this to purposely throttle my skill level to that of a more average player in the name of my own gamedev research) and explains the zero deaths. Mind you, I 100/100/100'd this, the soulsphere came in most handy; as did the rocket launcher which dispatched the ambushing crowds nicely.

Favourite part? Hearing those distant rev screams behind me before the exit, turning to deal with them and finding a fuckton more trouble. Wasn't a fan of the switch-chase to actually exit, but that's really just a minor niggle on a fantastic map with, as already mentioned, a great midi.

Incidentally, chaingun + revs is easy mode with their pain chance. I don't see the deal. :P

[baja blast rd.]

Map 04: "Blood Factory" by Steve D

Yes! This map is almost hilariously mean-spirited. It's not what I'd classify as a hard map (but even with foreknowledge, it is kind of hard to get through without a moderate-size mistake somewhere :P), but what it traffics in unapologetically is a willingness to make things messy: those pain elementals, those hitscanners, that big mess of the final fight with both archviles and pain elementals. I love it. The archvile hiding behind the pain elemental in the exit room is pretty funny. Not a huge fan of all the cliff imps, but that was the only thing I disliked. Aesthetically it's very old-school. That random bluewall room is the sort of thing you put in your map when you've basically made your mind up that looks don't really matter, and stuff like rock walls randomly having hydraulics fits into an oldschool aesthetic that is kind of what I expect from a TNT map.

In my maxdemo I abstained from using the plasma rifle in the final fight because it was a lot more fun with just the rocket launcher in my first playthough. The secrets (the first soulsphere one, at least) are a bit more interesting for the alternative strategies they allow than the goodies inside. In theory, if you get the pain elementals to fill this area up with lost souls, you don't have to deal with any in the final fight, owing to vanilla's lost soul limit. (But in practice, the souls readily infight at certain points, because the adjacent area has a line of sight of them.) That area also provides a nice vantage from which to deal with the mancs and chaingunners through the grates neatly. And btw the shotgun at the start feels kind of like an in-joke referencing Demon of the Well's edict about checking behind you right at the mapstart. :P

[baja blast rd.]

rehelekretep said:

youve now ruined sg/cg v revs even more rdwpa D:<

Sorry.

Jayextee said:

Incidentally, chaingun + revs is easy mode with their pain chance. I don't see the deal. :P

It's not about difficulty, it's about it being weird aesthetically and unsatisfying viscerally. The 'zerk/SSG/RL/BFG just have a lot more oomph than the SG/CG/chainsaw, and the plasma rifle makes up for its lack of oomph by having good amounts of pep and je ne sais quoi.

[Jayextee]

Fair enough. Best 'oomph' for me though, is the decisive SSG blast versus an arachnotron. Sweet music. ;)

[rehelekretep]

map02 - fda here

(yes i have discovered glboom's camera mode :p)

this is an awesome map. the midi is great, the map winds in on itself, there are loads of vantage points and differing heights, with a good mix of incidental combat ( ;) ) and setpieces. the only thing id criticise is the early use of damage-floors. entirely unnecessary and annoying that its pretty much mandatory for the RK and berserk.

[Demon of the Well]

Re: the discussion about fighting revenants, I think one of the things that makes them one of the game's most versatile monsters is precisely that they're fun to fight with almost every weapon (pistol excepted), probably a function of their role as a glass cannon of sorts. Fighting lone or small groups of revenants with the basic shotgun is something I often enjoy doing--their footspeed and relatively small hitbox makes it feel like you've got to lead them and anticipate their movements a little more than with most other monsters before pulling the trigger,--and I feel similarly about using the chaingun against them, although it's definitely more fun to try to hold off two or more coming at you simultaneously in that case than it is to just stunlock one by its lonesome to death (though of course at close range you've got to always be ready for that nasty countershot they sometimes pull). Hell, I even like using the chainsaw on them, even though doing that is generally rather foolish, objectively speaking. Will agree about them being perhaps the worst bipeds to use on a sniper-rail, though--they jitter around too much when limited to a lateral track and become obnoxiously hard to hit as a result, which tends to make engagements feel unpleasantly sloppy.

Map 02 -- Geothermal - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Woah, that supersized red pentacle gatepad at the start is cool! Must be a four-parter like the marble Baphomet portrait, yeah? Neat midi, too, the simulation of radio/tuning static as a brief bridge is rather a clever idea.

I hadn't played this one before personally, though I saw Dime blow through it on a stream the other day. Depicting an anonymous industrial node of modest proportions located farther out in the midst of the fiery sump first rendered as surrounding terrain in "Uprising", thematically it follows quite naturally from the waste dump site depicted in that map, enough so that the two locations might be credibly read as two parts of one larger structure, or perhaps as two kindred modular buildings found together in a close-knit network. This is to some extent a function of SFoZ911 and AD_79 sharing a number of similarities in their approach to rendering techbase architecture and decor (though SFoZ tends to build up and down, while AD tends to build out and around), though it's still quite recognizable as an AD piece for those who know his style, with the usual telltales such as the jigsaw-cut aspect of the natural terrain surrounding the building, and the use of glowing furnace-mouth insets under grates to decorate the meat of the structure between its metal skeleton, suggesting the building pulses with heat energy. No actual lava in sight, interestingly, though there must be some magma very near the surface, as several recesses in the terrain give off enough heat to scald the flesh from Doomguy's bones if he's not careful.

Texture alignment and other concourse details are immaculate, a relative rarity for the referenced era (and for just about anything that bears the TNT name, in truth). The sense of polish in concourse matters sits a little strangely with the angry scarlet/rust/green color scheme, I thought. The general visual theme of much of this first episode is somewhat abrasive, presumably by design, as a unique way of communicating the stain of Hell's presence through the resource pack without using standard Deimos tropes. It's not always entirely comfortable to look at, if I'm honest--I think this is in part what Memfis is reacting to--but it does have a lot of character and fits in fairly naturally with the 'steampunk flannel' look of WADs of a past age, though I think it reminds me more immediately of MM2 than of anything TNT-branded (it's gotta be the red+green). Anyway, I think it speaks volumes to AD's growing knack for color and texture use that he's made a very clean and coherent display out of an asset selection purpose-built to communicate corrosion, chaos and corruption, a skilled departure from the very single-color focus approach he often likes to work with (i.e. Violence, recommended above).

Action is more or less immediate (though you do get a nice quiet little starting area, another thing you won't necessarily be seeing a lot of in the coming maps), and does its duty in keeping up with the fast pace conspicuously set by the zerk-fest that was the previous map, though in terms of detailed scenarios there's really not a whole lot to report on--you climb a hill towards the geothermal node, mowing down fodder along the way, and then brave a couple of ambushes in cleaning out the structure itself, aided by a shortform weapon progression which shifts from buckshot to bullets to rockets over the span of a scant 3 or 4 minutes, if that. The placement of the yellow keycard is probably the level's most interesting feature--it totally looks, feels, even smells like it's going to be trapped, but it's not. No really! No strings attached. And yet, we weren't wrong in thinking there's a trap right there....there is, it's just tied to something else entirely, as an optional scuffle attendant with acquiring the soulsphere (which is a fairly easy secret, suggesting that AD really wants most folks to find it). The pincer attack at the exit is an encounter type that the author uses heavily in a great many of his maps, and so doesn't feel as anywhere near as crafty to me, though I suppose this wouldn't reduce its practical efficacy vs. players prone to getting flustered!

Minor-est of all minor bugs: in the small square room braced by yellow-lock doors and the red bars, the stimpack in the southeast corner is actually two stimpacks sitting in the same place (20% heal). Totally harmless, of course, but didn't strike me as intentional, so I thought I'd mention it in the interest of thoroughness.

[Jaws In Space]

Map 3 is Access Denied by Chris Hansen, it was accepted into Revilution in early December 2015 by Eris Falling. One of the ways that I wanted to differentiate Revilution from Devilution was by getting more veteran mappers & classical oriented mappers involved with Revilution, even for multiplayer I kept with this idea by having Doomkid do all of the deathmatch placement. In August 2015 Chirs Hansen, Pcorf, Capellan, & SteveD were the very first mappers that I tried to get involved with the project. Capellan wasn't interested, but Pcorf did work on a map for awhile, I'm pretty sure that map eventually ended up in Chris Hansen's own TNT wad THT: Threnody. During development of this map Chris didn't realize that we were aiming for vanilla compatibility, things get pretty close to breaking, but I never noticed any overflows when testing in ChocoRL.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 03 -- Access Denied - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
In contrast to the youngblood tagteam that kicked off the WAD, Chris Hansen is an old hand of the mapmaking scene, to say the least, with a number of his earlier works actually being built and released during the Team TNT era. As is natural, his style has changed and developed over time, and while for my part I sometimes miss that certain sardonic "Fuck you, deal with it" attitude that was often found in his older stuff (2002:ADO E3M6, anybody?) and which has largely been genteel'd out of his newer work, I don't hesitate to say that I feel he has become a true master of the 'early-game mapslot' field, not something I say lightly since my personal taste is generally much more inclined towards lategame stuff than the 'gathering storm' act. "Access Denied" is a prime example, a robust collection of skirmishes against a generous portion of foes from all ends of the monster spectrum ladled more or less evenly over a number of concept pieces smoothly meshed together in a layout that is both highly centralized and yet highly nonlinear. The gunplay, again built around a classically E1 diet of bullets and buckshot, features a lot of exchanges over distances and through windows and the like (and occasionally both), making it something of a sniper's paradise for methodically-minded players. And yet, its open scale and ease of traversal (interrupted in only a couple of places by the aesthetic choice to use auto-cycling lifts) married to an accommodating supply balance make it equally amenable to more aggressive play. Actual monster density is not terribly high given the size of the map, and the enemies are found almost exclusively in small discrete pods rather than as larger forces, even in the larger areas, but Chris is good at carefully orchestrating the rate and timing and origin of their assaults, such that you're always active, always fighting something, always spinning to check your six or deal with an attack coming through a flanking window or elevated ledge or the like. It's easy stuff for experienced/confident players, but engaging throughout, and feels like an invigorating little workout where you don't so much feel the burn as simply bask in the joy of movement for a few minutes.

As a layout, the level centers around the large central toxin-flooded vault with a security relay station in its center, the objective of the level being to breach said station and ride the teleporter within. Doing this requires collecting the blue and red keycards, which in turn requires some exploration and assorted switch-hittery, with the central conceit of the design being that you can check most of the necessary boxes in pretty much any order you like. I think this approach plays well with the classically E1-ish feel of the level--it's not always obvious precisely what you're actually accomplishing at any given moment, and redundancies in the interstitial passages and avenues connecting different areas (and different parts of different areas) make it easy to get sidetracked without realizing it, but the overall design is unified and carefully planned enough that you don't really need to worry much about it on your end, and can rest assured knowing that you're almost always accomplishing something no matter which way you turn at a given juncture, freeing you to focus more on the feedback loop of moving and killing. Coherency and visual affirmation of progress is lent to the whole scheme by way of the classic bridgebuilding trope used in the central area, where you can actually see your path to exit being physically constructed in stages as your victories in outlying areas mount. The immediate areas around the actual keycards also tend to be more conceptually focused--particularly the nifty two-stage helix stairway and security release grid for the BK--so it's pretty obvious when you've hit a milestone. Somehow the level put me in mind of "nataS oT etubirT" from Requiem in that sense (which I would generally consider a favorable comparison!), though I'm sure the very direct guitar-driven midi probably had some influence in that regard.

Another interesting aspect to the level is that, while it's recognizable as a modern Chris Hansen level, it's evident that he sought to evoke impressions of other mappers as well, presumably members from Team TNT's halcyon days. I can't really point out any direct homages or such, but the physical proportions of major rooms, selective symmetry, and loosely representational bent to actual level progression (i.e. activating one of the pumping housings so you can ride on its piston in order to leap to a new part of the level at one point) all remind in turns of various TNT authors. More than anything, this is communicated through scale, I think--I feel like most of the rooms here are Chris Hansen rooms blown up and carefully rescaled by about 33% or so after the fact. A simple approach, and maybe with just a touch of an uncanny valley effect, but ultimately effective, I think--it's easy (well, relatively speaking) to evoke this or that known author's style via conceptual allusions and the borrowing of notable idiosyncrasies, but quite another matter to capture the general feel of a WAD or an era in the absence of such referential anchors, and here I think Chris has successfully captured the TNT feel better than anything else in this first part of the game, again speaking to his volume of experience.

[Steve D]

rdwpa said:

This is map is almost hilariously mean-spirited.

Wow, thanks for that awesome playthrough. Favorite part is when you leaped off the Manc lift, spun around in mid-air, and took out a Chaingunner before your feet hit the ground. Doom Olympics Gold Medal Moment. Damn, I wish I could play like you and DotW, but if I could, my maps would be unendurable. ;D

About that blue room. I saw the texture and, you know, there aren't enough blue textures in Doom, so I had to put it somewhere, right? Dobu mentioned that it was a bit garish, so I darkened it. I felt that was a reasonable compromise. :D

Edit: As for the hydraulics in the stone, trust me, the most economical way to run blood pipes is by boring through solid rock. I thought everyone knew that.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP03: Access Denied

I really like the central chamber and adjacent areas to this one, the very visible construction of the bridge as the player makes progress through the level coupled with the steady unfolding of the paths to the keys required to gain access to that bridge and the exit door beyond - it doesn't obfuscate anything, the keys can be seen through barriers or on elevated platforms long before they can be reached, so it's more a matter of fitting the puzzle pieces together than of fumbling around in the dark, very engaging and involving in a way that's helped by the steady, constant tempo of the action. Lots of close-quarter encounters and hitscanners provide ample opportunities for a death by a thousand cuts, while the larger and more telegraphed marquee encounters didn't seem to present a threat to match their spectacle - I'm very much okay with that, though. :)

I'm not sure the music chosen for this one really fosters the kind of atmosphere that the map seems set on creating; I reached the end with 2/6 secrets found and was discouraged from backtracking to hunt down the rest largely by the fact that I couldn't face the additional minutes of droning, grinding distorted guitar line that would involve.

[Steve D]

JDoyle said:

I can't thank those who have said kind words about my music enough. When Jaws contacted me about contributing to this project I didn't even need to think about it. I hadn't worked with GM in probably 17 years but it's been really fun revisiting some of the ideas I'd started back then.

Please do us the favor of sticking around. The Doom Community can never have too many good musicians. I plan to PM you at some point with requests, either for that sequel project mentioned in another thread, or anything else that might come up. I have lots of potential projects to choose from and I'll definitely need some killer music. And I'm looking at you, too, Eris.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP03 Access Denied

Really not a fan of Hansen maps. Their intricate design makes them drag on for longer than I would hope for. So this map has quite a lot going for it, my first chaingunners are starting to show their pants here, and then there's a lot of running around to do. Why the key switches close to doors that I end up assuming are the key doors? That's rather bad to be honest. Liking the big areas with the nukage, they are decent. This Hansen map isn't as obtuse in progression as others I've played and the combat is good enough, but it's still intricate enough for me to take a while. No real bugs to report, the last time I did something I found just a misalignment on a lift which is now fixed.

[Tristan]

Steve: :D

--
MAP03: Access Denied - Chris Hansen
Time: 15:18 (22:06) | Deaths: 0

Well this was very tight. No idea how I got out of this one with no deaths, was under 50 health all the way. Found myself with a lot of ammo shortages too in the latter stages.

Chris Hansen is a well known and respected mapper, so I'm probably going to be burned at the stake when I say that other than this, the only other work of his that I'm familiar with is the two maps he made for THT: Threnody, neither of which I particularly warmed to. Access Denied is chronologically very close to the Threnody maps, but for me it outclasses both of them.
We suddenly see the monster count ramp up to just under 200, making this the first medium-sized map of the set - and thus I agree with DotW in that it does seem closer to typical TNT than the previous two maps - but coming from me this isn't much of a complaint.
What I will say though is that my fond memories of TNT come from the PSX version, so that's what defined the TNT style for me, and therefore in some ways, even TNT doesn't quite capture that "TNT style," heh. Only one thing for it then, we need PSX Doom: Revilution! :V (ragnor you listening?)

A slightly confusing layout leaves the possibility of getting lost very much open, and despite playing through this map several times already I still don't entirely know where to go at first. The only actual complaint I have with regards to progression is that it seems quite easy to forget about the blue key once you've cleared out both of the main fights associated with it. My natural instinct after dealing with the mini-cacoswarm is to leave the area via the short corridor that opens at the top of the stairs, which of course, doesn't return you to the area that has the blue key in the first place.

Chaingunners start to appear in greater volumes here, and less-than-plentiful health pickups mean that despite being generally easy, there's also little room for major errors, and unfortunately I made quite a couple here.
Visually I'd probably place this between the first two maps. Music was ok, and I wouldn't necessarily say it was unfitting, but the UD666 tracks were never a highlight of the WAD for me to be honest.

8/10

[Demtor]

This map is filled with the blood of my failures.


MAP04 - “Blood Factory” by Steve D
gzDoom - UV – pistol start/no saves


The exterior base design looks great. Mixing a lot of the natural rock formations with liquid falls always makes for a lot of nice visuals throughout a map. This one even has a nice blue watered safe haven that was completely optional and only has a handful of health potions. I like a nice pat on the head like that. Just a nice visual reward for a little extra exploratation. Then there's the super secret area behind this fence that offered an extra fight for a soulsphere and some ammo if you like a good challenge. The little ambush after the RK was tricky. I swear this hallway was designed to keep the revs at the far end, juuuust out of effective reach from the SSG. Grrr. I died A LOT on this map.

Figuring out the best way to approach each area was a practice of patience combined with a steely resolve I had only displayed with the likes of a Dark Soulsian game. I was stubbornly determined to stick with not saving and I may have to abandon that in later maps for sanity sake. I died so many times doing things "the wrong way" that by the time I had most areas figured out ahead of time, returning to them during my more successful attempts was a real treat. However, that started getting old the 10th time around. Being able to fly through tedious and frustrating areas quickly as long as I could maintain my accuracy and nerve was enjoyable but only for so long. Hate it when you feel like you're not getting any further and are instead banging your head against the wall.

Which brings me to said wall at the end with 3 PE's, 3 Revs, 2 spiders, and 2 AV's both flanked by chaingunners. Combine all that with a one way ledge drop, 2 HK's blocking each of the two exitways going up. Brutal. I managed to deal with it my first go but there were so many lost souls flying about that I missed a HK fireball on the steps and died a miserable death. To die so close to the end after having 200/200 and a plasma gun going (thanks to secrets and saving the blue armor) was disheartening. To say the least. Losts souls everywhere!! Just nagging at your health and distracting you from the real threats flying through the air. Grrr.

On another try I made it to the top finally and was greeted by an instant PE. Opened the door and there's another one with an AV behind him looking to fry you! I felt like I was being trolled by a DM at that point. That's some cheap shit right there. Effective, but God damn it's just mean. At least there was health inside that exit room so if you were desperate (I always was) you can rush in and hopefully avoid a fire blast while squeezing past the PE for a much needed health boost.

I would beg for a chain fence or something to at least block up that open air at the top so the other PE's and Lost Souls aren't able to get at you but I suppose that'd make it all too easy then. Plus, if you do rush in to the exit (actually diving inside the exit room and hopefully blasting away) it is pretty funny to peak back outside again to see the sky filled with anger.

At least the HK's weren't barons and unable to walk up and down the stairs. Appreciated the tiny stimpacks and extra shells that can be picked up if you manage not to get your ass bit by lost souls while trying to run around and grab them too.

Whew. As is, it was a memorable ending to a painful map 04. Just enough plasma ammo to keep you from being able to overpower everything but also make things doable at the end if used wisely. It's very tempting to unload on the half dozen Revs who teleport in to jump you with the HK a little before the big end fight. And if you didn't realize you would need that PG teasing you at the beginning, then the upper area with 3 chaingunners guarding a switch to lower a single giant plasma pack should clue you in to go back and look for secrets.

Anyways, as frustrating as some of the encounters and ambushes were, I had a lot of fun figuring things out. Just the start alone to the BK and SSG can be nasty. Sometimes I would manage things on my first attempt (barely) and then later improve upon them so by the end of my hour long session with this map, I had things pretty much licked except for the last fight which seemed to be hit or miss no matter what. A very hard map but a good one with a few nice visuals, set pieces and extra detailing. Well done.

[Tristan]

MAP04: Blood Factory - STEVED
Time: 14:07 (36:14) | Pelts: 5

Got well and truly Steved with this one. Oh well, I'm less familiar with this map than the three before it, it's significantly more difficult anyway, and I went in with 37 health, it was to be expected. I did find all four secrets though, so that was yummy.

Quite a departure from previous maps, with this taking part in pretty large rooms with a general liquid theme, as we wanted for Sea Bats - the first Viscra MIDI so far - though this isn't quite what I personally had in mind for it (I tried making an E1 map with it myself before Steve joined the project). Still, Sea Bats fits in quite nicely here, so it's quite nice to have such a memorable tune included.
Visually the map is a step down from the previous three but still quite nice aesthetically, quite cleanly detailed. The massive cavern area for the soulsphere secret was pretty awesome to walk through, love big secret areas like that - the fight that followed it with three pain elementals was less awesome, as I lost most of the health I gained from the soulsphere in the first place. I dunno, you can't do much to stop a group of pain elementals spitting out a load of lost souls without a BFG, feels more like punishment for taking the soulsphere which is weird for a secret area, but that's what you get when you play on UV I guess.

I was very tempted to drop back to HMP here, but I persevered, and 5 deaths pelts isn't so bad, though I'm sure Steve will be pleased to see such a large set on his map starting my many dyings of this adventure ;)
All in all, it wasn't really THAT difficult, it just took a few attempts to figure out what to do, on the first time I ever played this, I was basically in headless chicken mode and it never ended well...
Anyway, I've been through worse. There's worse in this project (I'm legit dreading MAP16).
Even the last fight wasn't so bad, despite two archviles. Easy to provoke infighting so none of this bullshit blasting you while you're still running for cover that's like 3 miles away, haha.
The archvile in the exit was one too many for me though, I was completely out of ammo at this point and didn't bother fighting it.

Oh and of course it wouldn't be a Stevemap without...

Only a small one. What's up?

Good map, but I'm remembering a very solid MAP14 and I think Blood Factory won't be going down as Steve's best work for the project.

8/10

[mouldy]

Suitepee said:

Since I'm taking a break from playing Doom wads for the month of February (and allowing people time to request stuff for me to play....), I'll have to quietly decline taking part in this month's DWMC.

I think I might take over from Suitepee and do a stream of this tomorrow, maybe. I played a couple of maps quickly and it seems like some good stuff.

[Suitepee]

mouldy said:

I think I might take over from Suitepee and do a stream of this tomorrow, maybe. I played a couple of maps quickly and it seems like some good stuff.

No mouldy, get on with Going Down 2! Sounds fun to me, might even catch one of your streams of this wad.

[sincity2100]

Map01 - “Uprising” by SFoZ911

Nice opening map, I played it before , really cool looking design,I was surprised seeing an Arch-Vile in this map while getting the soulsphere at the second secret, the map starts by a homage to the original TNT by a berserk pack,the action is pretty cool.

Map02 - “Geothermal” by AD_79

Similar design to the first map,this one the secrets are easy to find,but it's really well mapped and I realize that this map is more difficult that I found,it's a nice slugfest.

Map03 - “Access Denied” by Chris Hansen

This map is rather long and a little bit tedious for a map03, it should have been in a later slot like map09 or map10 slot,I don't know, this one I had a hard time navigating this map,it looked rather tiersome.

Map04 - “Blood Factory” by Steve D

This map is so mean-spirited map, and it's hard as hell, introducing powerful monsters in a large sized area,that was really painful to get through as I died twice in this map, I'm also realizing that they threw the hard stuff way too early,the last fight looked like it should've belonged to a middle map,also try not to throw 4 archviles early,they blow their loads very early that I felt that this is gonna be a slaughter map or something.

[Bucket]

ZOOOOOOOOOOOOM INTO THE THREAD

Thanks for liking the MAP01 song. I'd submitted three similar-sounding songs for TNT2 and decided to take one off the table just to limit the monotony. The one that didn't make the cut is in my BucketDM2 WAD. And yes, I threw Parabola in there.

I had a pool of over two dozen songs for the project but since the split I figured it was best to leave the divvying-up to the mappers instead of the project leads. Lord knows what happened to that plan. I think Devilution laid claim to a bunch of them and then faded into Mordeth Land, which is a dick move.

[Tristan]

Bucket said:

I think Devilution laid claim to a bunch of them and then faded into Mordeth Land, which is a dick move.

I get where you're coming from, but imo at this point if you want to use them for any other purpose, do so (maybe say they can still use them if they want). I think they don't care about having a completely new soundtrack anyway, and besides, they're your midis.
I'll be doing the same with a midi I made for Into the Void last year, I don't make these things so they can be attached to dead projects...

[grommile]

MAP04 (as usual, HMP / continuous / reloading)

... ayup. I'd been getting a growing feeling that I was not part of this wad's target audience, and the no-retreat ambush section in the part of the level beyond the RK door is where I hit the wall. A shame, really; this is a damn fine level, with some excellent music to boot.

See y'all next month.

[Tarnsman]

Eris Falling said:

attached to dead projects...

TNT2 is not dead.

[Tristan]

I wasn't talking about TNT2 in that sentence, but since you mentioned it, it sure looks dead if you aren't one of that small core team. The last mention of actual significant progress in the thread was nearly a year ago. Apparently alter isn't even in charge anymore.

[Tarnsman]

It's just hiding, laying in wait to strike at the opportune time.

[baja blast rd.]

Map 05: "Graveyard Shift" by Jaws in Space

Attrition is the name of the game here. There are health pickups scattered about, but not too many of them, and there is almost no armor until you get to the diaper protected fervently by the two fatsos deeper into the base. Spectres make a strong showing, and operating in the darkness of the geothermically-lit dawn, they can corner you quite easily if you don't clear out all of them at the earliest opportunity. It's also one of those maps where monsters can clump in surprisingly large groups if you leave them be for some time.

Aesthetically there aren't many frills, except of course for that cute little mini-model of the blue key dais. lol. That's funny. The backpack secret is strangely disconnected from the primary flow of the map, and feels more like an afterthought than anything.

Playthough below. It's nice that you're able to get good weapons in basically a few seconds. A UV-Max in below the par time is certainly not that hard to get, but I'll leave that potentially to a session on the final version. Overall this was a pretty fun map.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP04: Blood Factory

Prior DWMCers have described this map as "mean-spirited" and I can't disagree with that, but sometimes it's fun to tangle with a map that's clearly stacking the deck in its own favour. The environment here is a fun one, primarily technological elements embedded in a bedrock base and then drenched in endless gallons of gore in a knowingly ridiculous commingling of popular Doom themes, and it's a map that nicely rewards exploration and a simple willingness to wander.

[Tompig]

Access Denied.
By Chris Hansen.

Not the prettiest map of the bunch so far, we have left the hell planes for a moment to go full Quake II-esq tech-base, interesting architecture throughout but unfortunalty I think it was a mistake to drop the organic and hellish imagry present in the previous levels and all-in-all this map was not my cup of tea visually.

This map seemed to increase the difficulty somewhat, leaving tricks and traps to one side in exchange for increasing the overall difficulty and amount of monsters present at most engagements, here the forces of hell seem to have taken the high ground... literally, my highlight for 'difficult yet fair' combat encounter has to go to the open courtyard section filled with nukage, imps and chaingunners have a surrounding ledge from which they can snipe, they are backed up with some heavy artillery in the form of a pair of nearlly static mancubi and wandering hell knights... not to mention the air support given by the numerous cacodemons! Phew that was an interesting fight, even after softening them up with some chaingun sniping earlier on.

Not the best map of the bunch but certainly a welcome addition.