The DWmegawad Club plays: Newgothic Movement 2 & Deus Vult II

[Nine Inch Heels]

17 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

I'm using PrBoom+ width 320 and height 200, all looking vanilla-ish as that's my personal preference, oh and keyboard only. Most people here play with GlBoom or GZdoom, with enhanced lightning, probably faster movement, and probably someone uses freelook and/or mouselook, which guarantees better visualizing. In my case it becomes very hard to see something when it's so dark  but I'm not complaining about that since as said, it's a preference of mine, and I'm not criticizing others choices, everyone has the right to do things their way. I would like to know how others found that part of Map 05 in general, if better with freelook or horizontal look, if better correcting gamma or not, if using the mouse or only keyboard... Don't get me wrong, I don't hate that part or find it impossible, but I want to know if these external things mentioned before make a real change for the gameplay.

If you limit your field of view to a 320x200 resolution, you've already handycapped yourself quite a bit. In my opinion, maps of this day and age are made and tested with aspect ratios of 16:9 as a baseline. You can react to much more, if you see more. Slaughter maps that field large numbers of opposition are more or less a no-go area for 320x200.

 

Keyboard only is not a problem for these maps. Many really good players use keyboard only, though I will add that they also use the instant 180° turn to be more agile instead of waiting to turn "on the spot" or run half circles to turn. The more space your maneuvering requires, the more you spread out projectiles, the more difficult it can become to dodge reliably. Also, spreading bullets due to inappropriate movement "double dips" with your 320x200, meaning there's a chance your playstyle consists of shooting yourself in the foot during a hurdle run twice.

 

I don't use faster movement for demos. My movespeed is the same as yours.

 

I don't use mouselook unless I play some GZDoom stuff that specifically needs that.

 

That part with the pillars gave me basically no trouble worth mentioning, since there's shitloads of cover as well as enough real estate to move around in.

 

You can go far with keyboard only, if you pratice that properly, in my opinion though, mousing is vastly superior to keyboarding.

 

Also, vanilla-fetishes aside, these maps expect you to perfom somewhat consistantly in spite of their relatively forgiving nature thus far. They put you in scenarios that will take you a minute or longer to get by. Anything that impedes your FOV, your accuracy, or your "agility" is going to be a problem by way of nature, especially when cybies or other relatively lethal stuff is around.

[galileo31dos01]

Omg I "fixed" the gamma to make it look brighter and it went like a piece of cake!

 

 

I'm going to keep practicing this way...

 

[baja blast rd.]

NG2 map07

 

I have a soft spot for cramped nonsense, so I like this map. It's one of those maps that calls for strategy and stuff. The start is easiest if you keep silent for a bit; hitscanners bicker amongst themselves and you have a clear path to rush to the BFG and RL. One BFG shot silences the vile, spam rockets at the barons, all is clear. In this run a random chaingunner got his own ideas, and a caco wandered out from the caco pen, both of which usually don't happen. Rocket ammo can be tightish so it pays to get the manc to infight some cacos. Another BFG shot takes care of the other vile. The next part can be 'cheesed' by rushing back out to the start area, which requires some deft movements. Two-shotting the cyber saves some cell ammo for the next part, which is a good idea because you can enter low on health. The rising elevator is fun stuff. Spam the viles. Now for the twin cybers. It is quite useful to kill one cyber while the elevator is still rising, otherwise you risk some unpleasant double penetration action. For this, you can use a sort of modified two-shot: go for the usual timing, but just get really close right after the volley ends. And quickly fire another shot at point-blank. Eating a single rocket is no big deal, because there's plenty of health in the cave where the cyberdemon is hosting a weight loss clinic with some motivational revenant guest speakers. From this point on, the rest of the map is quite generous with supplies. Slippery floors make two-shotting the hallway cybers awkward except on little patches. 

 

You can use one of the invuls to sweep the caco tunnels faster, but I never bothered because I misinterpreted the 666/667 triggers at the time. :)

 

 

Edited June 7, 2017 by rdwpa

[Demtor]

 

Map 06

gzDoom - UV – pistol start/saves

 

Another fun and open map. Lots of good looking temples and buildings with natural grass step landings and such. I thought the ditch areas with trees as an added extra challenge was kind of neat. You don’t need to jump down there necessarily but the potentially early PG is worth it. Also a good place to keep your head down if you can’t deal with the SMM’s when they come out to play hide and go seek.

 

I liked the crafty attempt at making it feel like you teleported onto the roof of the starting area. Lots of good combat in enclosed area’s combined with outside groups after things open up. I love it when I’m able to clear a trap encounter on the first attempt without save scumming. Feels good, bro. *flex*

 

The cycling cyberdemon’s on the telefraggable platforms was pretty neat. Hard to pull off within the IV sphere time frame. Seemed like a really fun challenge as opposed to the earlier here’s another wall of imps, bunch of shit and a cyberdemon that can maybe get old in slaughtery wads unfortunately. I don’t mind at all though. Like I said earlier, it feels pretty baller being able to handle stuff like that from time to time.

 

The cave system lighting was pretty cool. I tried to run away from the SMM’s but then get stuck in a hole of nastyness. That BFG was such a pain in the ass to get to. By the time I was able to do it, I had killed everything else (almost) in the entire map. Aww well. It was all pretty fun with the PG too. Was happy to find all those dead marines with their pristine armor next to them, heh.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP05

62% kills, 0/1 secret

 

This one was actually fairly fun to run'n'gun through. The opening battles aren't too tough (though I admit I doorway-abused the MAP04 look-a-like area), though when it came time to grab the red key I turned into 'run away as much as possible' mode. Grabbed the BFG and high-tailed it outta there, though with quite a bit of save scumming to get past it all. The AV/cyber area was actually pretty fun, good cat-and-mouse game. Blood columns area gave me trouble, but once I figured out that the blue switches would let me out, I pretty much just dashed in and out after taking out the AVs. Run for the yellow door and home free.

[galileo31dos01]

MAP06

Time: 57:54

Death Count: around 10 or so, many testing reloads

Secrets legally found: 1/1

 

A very nice visually map with a lot of space outside to run and dodge projectiles, at the same time it has many many hitscanners roaming prepared to drain your health. I won't lie, I started with the left foot (or right, we say the left one in spanish), eating all the fireballs and getting blocked by the pinkies. The blue teleport caused me trouble at first but I understood that the correct path is running to flip the switch and getting back to the main area asap. Once the central temple was opened, I came out and started to run and shoot and run and shoot and run and shoot. I died the first time with an archvile that saw me from very far and had no time to cover myself. The second try went out so much better, killed the snipers with my RL (continuous mode), proceeded to the surrounding path, where there were a lot of trees. And once I had the temple for myself, I remembered I hadn't seen checked the automap lol, always check the automap at the beginning of every map.

Spoiler

The first place I went was the ultra dark cave with the revenants and an archvile, but I stopped myself when I saw the YK area from above. Nope nope nope nope

First key, the BSK, the pinkies that instantly teleported blocked my way and killed me, I don't know how they didn't telefrag me... Second try, much better, BFGing the way but being careful not to let the cyber go down the platform. Grabbing the key allowed three SMMs teleport around the temple. Not threatening at all, since at least two of them got to infight and with cover the last one was pretty easy. 

The subsequent keys were much harder to get, since the YK part pretty much demands to be invulnerable for the first seconds as the instant you teleport in you get murdered by a Hell Knight. And the RK part also demands a little bit of the single invulnerability sphere to at least telefrag one of annoying cybers. Yep, Cyberdemons that are constantly teleporting in different spots can be slightly annoying, a challenge of course, but annoying. Many tries I spent and many curses hehe, but I eventually came out with a plan. The first thing, flipped the switch and waited for the minority to be rocketed to death. Then, grabbed the sphere and telefrag one cyber as fast as possible. Quickly returned to the temple and went to the yellow teleport (which was easy to confuse with the blue teleport being invulnerable). Quickly fell down and BFG the Cyberdemon and hidden myself. Then, killed the other enemies and grabbed the YK. Obviously to have 100% I had to take the green teleport again and finnish the other guys. As I didn't want to explode again and again, I positioned myself here:

Spoiler

And used my weapons to slowly kill them. I don't mind spending more or less time if I really want to 100% everything. 

The last enemies were a few pinkies and revenants... So as usual, went to fill in ammo, grabbed the remaining items and got to the exit.

So, this map was good, even though I had a hard time to get on with it. Probably what I didn't enjoy was the red key part. The midi was fine. 

 

I'm going to take a break from the wad, as I feel like I really need to. 

[Crusader No Regret]

Map 5:  I won't be playing this for the club though I did do some scouting with cheats.  A nice bonus for continuous players is being able to splatter imps at the start with rockets from above.  Saw the radiation section and decided I didn't want to put in the effort to solve the encounter.

 

Map 6: Completed without cheats.  Fun map even when I find the most cheesy and corwardly ways to approach encounters.  It looked intimidating on initial visits until I realized the blue teleport isn't blocked on the other side.  So cheesed the first rooftop by hopping on and off the teleport to bait infights.  Cleared out enough space to reach the switch having still not alerted the waiting cacodemons.

  Outdoors area delivers chaos and the player is free to choose their preferred approach.  Flows similarly to map 3 though it's more dangerous here with all the perched spiders and revenants and hitscanners at ground level.  Very easy to take chip damage and I had a few deaths trying to orchestrate things to my liking.

  Had a laugh at those sunbathing cacodemons overlooking the canyon.  I pictured them and the other canyon dwellers being lazy members of the demon army that only fight because the contract says so and even if they hear combat elsewhere, ignore it because "I don't see anything."  Works OK gameplay wise too since alerting everyone at once would make the outdoor area boring after everything is cleared out.

  Went for yellow key first.  I used the cave entrance and didn't even consider using the teleport in the start area.  It's probably designed that the player drops into a hornets nest.  What happened for me is that I alerted a bunch of enemeis before dropping down so I stayed up, baited infights, and finished off the survivors with rocket splash.  So i partially cheesed it.  Died and reloaded some times getting the cyber to kill of the other monsters in the chamber.  BFG in hand, I leave and spectate the spiders bickering with each other.  Silly, yet fun.

  Red key isn't too bad.  Put the cyber artillery to work on the other monsters and take advantage of the safespot galileo pointed out.  Took some attempts to actually kill the cybers with telefrags while invulnerable.  I actually manage all three when I would have been happy with two but that leaves no time to rush the last key still invulnerable.

  Blue key is the hardest since there are no cheese strats I could find.  The setup is evil with those ledge hellknights sitting just out of reach and getting close enough to attack them triggers the trap.  Died to monsters teleporting at point blank around me the first time.  I do make things harder on myself because I try to maneuver everything into infighting instead of playing it smart and splattering a bunch of weaklings to create space.  Stubbornness prevails here though it is a case of trading ammo for health (which is completely unnecessary)  Health fell from 130% to 45% before I felt the situation was stablized and decided that was good enough to continue.

  31 monsters still alive when I have all three keys and a clear path to the exit.  At a later time, I'll load the save and mop up the survivors but decided I wanted the exit before typing this up.  Not much excess cell ammo lying around but other stuff is plentiful.  Also, the first visually striking level in this set for me.  Earlier maps were serviceable; this one had me going "wow"

Edited June 7, 2017 by Crusader No Regret : ...

[Demtor]

 

Map 07

gzDoom - UV – pistol start/saves

 

One of the better aztec/egyptian-esque dungeons I’ve played in Doom. Once you get past the frustrating RNG start and manage to survive past the first AV you can, every so slowly, start making some real progress that doesn’t require a ton of painful gains.

 

What a wonderful looking treasure trove of riches... AHHH! That fountain room gets even crazier later on. God damn! The best set up though was the lone imp in front of a bunch of turned mancs, revs and cyberdemon. Shhh, don’t make a sou… AAHHHH!

 

My favorite bit was the dark maze after the elevator ride (nice touch with the torches) stuck between two cyberdemons. That was some crazy shit. Running for your life, getting stuck between spiders while a group of biggies throw rockets at you. Insanity. That area has some great detailing with the candles, skulls designs and crumbling rocks.

 

Also, that music ROCKS! What a killer track.

[NuclearPotato]

Fell a bit behind, as seems to be per usual for when I play in the Megawad Club.  I'll catch up fully on Friday, in the meantime:

 

New Gothic Movement 2: MAP05

75% kills, 0/1 secrets

 

Let's talk about pacing.  Especially when you're dealing with slaughtermaps this large, it's pretty important to pace your battles well, and to have something suitably climactic for your final battle.  The big problem this map has is that it has around 2-3 large scale setpieces that would make for a perfect final battle, only for the map to keep dragging onwards from there.  It starts off well enough, with a fairly hectic close quarters battle through swarms of imps while trying to deal with revs and HKs.  You have a small scale arena battle immediately afterward (hope you picked up both the rocket launcher and plasma rifle, cause you'll need both of those to take on the rest of the map, and there's no other chance to grab them).  This leads into the big setpiece battle of the map, a frantic blast-a-thon through lava to get the BFG and red key from hoards of Cacos, two Cyberdemons, and an assortment of HKs, Arachnotrons, and Mancubi.  Once you deal with that, you'll have to fight your way through another hoard of agitated skeletons, backed by another Cyberdemon camping the teleporter out of the lava.  The major problem I have with this map is that I feel, with a couple of flow modifications, that this should've been the final battle.  Trying to fight your way around nukage, keeping an eye on how many rad suits are left; it gives a real desperate feel to the whole battle that the encounters that follow just can't live up to.  The battle following immediately is a rather grindy fight against a Cyber and a hoard of Arch-viles, which didn't particularly engage me, followed up by a long drop into the penultimate fight, which I probably would've received better had it been earlier in the map, and had there been a bit more health than just the Megasphere that you have to grab pretty early on into the fight to survive against the hoards surrounding you.  This is the other fight that felt like a pretty good note to end on, but no, we've got one more!  Once you've gotten the yellow key and have gotten back to the mini-arena this map is now obviously based around, you have to deal with a bunch of enemies teleporting in, including at least two(!) Spider Masterminds.  Honestly, I was so exhausted at this point that after the first attempt, I decided to rush into the exit room, BFG'ing the hell out of the mass of Archies in the room, and managing to death exit my way into the next map.

 

Honestly, that's the major fault I see with this map.  It's got some good encounters in it, but the encounters feel a little out of order in placement, and the whole thing is just long enough to feel like a drag because of it.

[rehelekretep]

catching up!

map04 fda

cool map. a little undercooked, especially the finale felt a bit low in numbers.

 

map05 fda

that bloodfalls cyber room is just beautiful; i got such a mental workout from trying to survive that - ''ok so cyber 12 is over there, and cyber 8 is there but hes about to finish off a caco and then he'll be shooting at me, and i can hit cyber 4 now but im going up these slippery prboom steps so i need to make sure i dodge cyber 7's 2nd rocket there" great stuff!

 

map06 fda

not a fan - lots of running around like a muppet across a quite ugly landscape. the interesting moments were the teleporter up/down first fight, the cave fights (use the torches to cheese the cyber!) and the cyber teleporter fight which was quite tense when only 1 is left.

 

map07 fda

that lift is just 'eugh' - i hate that sudden jumpy switch between different 'levels' i guess you could call them. ToD is a fan, but ive never liked the effect, and regardless of what rdwpa says i think that scenario with the AV/cybers is just too random to be fun.

the cyber/arachnotron maze is cool, and give me more of a mental workout trying to 'map' it in my head.

the final fountain room with the cyber and AV attack is one of the most brutal set-ups ive ever seen, genuinely had me saying 'what the fucking fuck' at the screen until i worked out a strategy that was somewhat consistent. liked that a lot.

Edited June 7, 2017 by rehelekretep : fixed links

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP07

 

Seems very setpiece-y, run from the barons at the start and kill whatever's in front of you. Fine by me. An interesting but not really new usage of 666 and 667 tags, kill the respective monsters to open two secrets. Both secrets have invulnerabilities. And yet there's a good chance you'll likely only use one of them, considering how this is set up. The majority of mancubi are in the northern cave area, and the arachnotrons in the southern maze. Arch-viles and cyberdemons are STILL the most annoying enemies of all, especially with the central drop with two cybers on the side but annoying arch-viles resurrecting enemies next to me. Hell, the one cyber in the hall full of imps does nothing BUT shoot at me. Fuck these cyber placements, it's so difficult to shoot with this little leg room.

[D4NUK1]

So..internet goes off on my country and im late on my post!

So he're come.

Map3 : The first fun map action on this wad.
The temple its a nice touch and the time to give u to preparate to what it next when u activate the botton its cool. Going to the left, i'm ready to evade and run in circles rocketing everything alive. Killing the archi first ofcourse. When free of monsters the SShotgun position was cool, and i was expecting that kinda mosnter lock out. The temple interior to grab the bfg9000 and kill barons and reverants was awesome and keep me pumped with the nice locations of items. Also im rushed that cyberdemons couse i can't kill them in so little space.

Going next to the maze system after picking and killing the caco and other demons with the chaingun was frustating, but my way of rush>die>learn>repeat give me the key and oh boy what a demon-fest was after. So kill anything that is in my way to the teleporter 

Map4: Monster Counter less that 200?! Welp, tranks

Pretty easy to kill the pinkys and imps in the first section. The items grab and kill mob demons (Barons, reverants and that fat camper demon that i hated on my childhoud!), but anyway's pretty doable with the bfg9000 of last level. And the preparation for grab the soulphere and activate the switch to have u locked with barons and 2 cybers! Actually i was hiding behind the barons and they take the rocket for me, after the secons passed away and the doors opened, i try to camp downstairs and actually killed close to all the demons of that section. But when i got to the doors and keep pushing and demons attacking of my sides and my back, i'm try to live with 70 hp and 90 armour and go to the teleporter. And after i touched the teleport, the archie had killed me!. But shame on u achi-ville! You jumped me to the exit.

 

Map 5: Pistol start..couse i die in the exit. That not its a good screen, but was using saves and being away of my weapons got me down :C

 

Anyway the first section of this was the FUN part. With the megasphere, chaingun and shotgun there. The imps and demons was going down. Running and evading rockets of the reverants when only imps keeped in the map was pretty easy, Going up to get the rocket and plasma was cool, and easy to kill the chainguners. 

Them goes the "demon-fest" On the one-jump way down. to try to make ur way on killing imps, cacos, barons and mecha-spiders. the megaspehere down there was a good place, to try to run if u need to live. Killing the arachatron was somewhat hard evading the rockets, so i was going to try my best with the plasma gun. Barons and Mancubi? Ez. But then. Another "demon-fest" of cyberdemons, soooo many imps and pinkies! Got the bfg, got my switch, got the megaarmour and killed so many..Them in the other side where its the reverants was my safe place. Activating the switch and i got scared for that cyber behind me! And i was out of plasma and rockets! How i try to kill them!? I can't so my better try its pistol the switch and run for the hills of the demons sides and go to the teleport! And was pretty easy to got. Rearming with ammo pickups  im try my best in the next section, but there its "the im going to fuck u" section of this map, Going down of the pool of blood, and escaping of archies and cybers demons to only die so many times in that pit. with luck to try open the 4 switch and the key to open the doors and end this nigthmare! Really, sometimes invuneravirity can make some sections fun. And also, getting fucked by spidermastermind and archiviles pushing me off the door and need to do all over again of pool of blood>pit>teleport>run to the door. and also, fucking archies on the exit, im really dont know how many saves and time spent there.

 

Still playing map 6, and i hope tomorrow bring the 6 and 7.
 

[baja blast rd.]

5 hours ago, rehelekretep said:

and regardless of what rdwpa says i think that scenario with the AV/cybers is just too random to be fun.

It happens the way it did in my video pretty consistently. 

[SleepyVelvet]

Map06: the mapset seems to be alternating between big-and-open and tight-and-cramped.  I like em both ways.  Map06 was fun.  I plopped a save after clearing out most of the outdoor section, then another save after a couple keys were acquired.  Yellow key zone was the hardest part, though there were two ways to enter it.  Maps like this that let you tackle them from different angles and in different orders are pretty cool.

 

Map07: woah that's a hard start.  most of my deaths were between the start and the first cyberdemon.  I saved after killing the first cyber, and saved another after going down that sneaky turbo lift and returning through one of the tunnel teleporters.  This one was exciting and I was on edge for the second half of the map.

[Nine Inch Heels]

NG2 m06

 

Not too much to say here. It's got all the essentials in place that I happen to enjoy. Space to move around in is ample, gameplay is straight forward. feelsgoodman... The fake pressure during the opening is nothing I find irritating personally, it simple sets the tone and says "you're gonna be lazy, you're gonna get killed".

 

NG2 m07

 

I can see why people don't enjoy this as much and I have mixed feeling about it too.

 

First off, I'm not a fan of cramped stuff. Second off, I don't like being more or less forced to 2-shot most cybies in a map to have a fluent progression due to ammo conservation. It's nice doing that a couple times, but it feels like if I don't 2 shot at least half of the cybies I'm doing it wrong. Granted, this map makes for a good excercise in that regard, however waiting for cybies to start firing a volley makes things feel a bit sluggish on occasion.

 

The elevator fight with the two cybies is something I can get right about 70% of the time, probably a bit more often even, so it isn't too bad in and off itself. What leaves a bitter taste in my mouth is that up until that point I've already spent some time on the map with things I do not enjoy as much, so getting a run stopped on the elevator feelsbadman.

 

The underground sections mix things up a little. There's one cramped area yet again, thankfully the cybie there is easy to get to infight and health in that area is abundant, so it can be played relatively safely, while it also forgives the occasional bold-move. The tunnel with the arachs and cacos makes for some nice spammy slaughter goodness and it probably also allows for a bit of infighting fun. Only downside would be the layout, which greatly decreases the odds of getting infights of a certain magnitude going, thus it doesn't seem like it will reward stirring the hornet's nest as much.

 

All things considered, this map expects the player to do most of the heavy lifting with carefully placed BFG shots and a bit of rocket spam, which makes the gameplay feel very much like actual heavy lifting after several attempts. Not my cup of tea, but it's good excercise.

[rehelekretep]

P.S. i wasted the 2nd invuln on map07 and only had 1 save so had to YOLO the final fight with the cybers and the AVs. well worth checking out even if you dont watch the whole FDA

[baja blast rd.]

NG2 m08

 

Reasonably fun map except for a few spots. First is all the chaingunners in the RK room. They might not seem so dangerous but they can ruin a run surprisingly quickly, and the other is bad goat transportation in the last arena. The teleportation closets are big, and there aren't many lines, so some monsters end up trickling very slowly. I had a run (in the video below) that would have been 6:1x if I just got a bit more luck there. But I should be able to get it below 6:00 with some other minor route changes that came to mind after seeing how slow the monsters teleport in, so it's not the worst thing in the world. 

 

One of the cooler things about this map is the opportunity for BFG pre-firing. If you fire a shot and enter a teleporter, you can sometimes use those tracers to your advantage. A rule of thumb I'm adding to my little personal list of mapping tips is that if you are otherwise indifferent about where exactly to place a teleporter or orient a hallway in a BFG map, do it so that the player has the option some firing a BFG at a distant wall and using the tracers elsewhere. It's fun. I also like how it's possible to just skip the early warm-up fights in this map and deal with the monsters later. I think hard lock-ins are nearly always a meh idea when the fight they are keeping the player in isn't particularly threatening. Better to at least give the player a risky 'aggressive' way of getting out. 

 

 

 

[rehelekretep]

map08 fda

really cool map ruined by an unsatisfying ending. as rdwpa mentioned, the end teleporters spit stuff out in dribs and drabs and you just have to keep moving to stay alive.

i found the secret invuln. so i could go around blasting the AVs on the perimeter, which are the main threat.

you can even head back inside and leave the hordes to infight. i looked for a way to telefrag the pyramid cybers but didnt find anything obvious so just left the map; im not spamming BFGs at them up there, its one of the most irritating clean-up jobs.

[NuMetalManiak]

Was I really the only one who had an issue with MAP06's exit?

 

MAP08

 

The general setpieces keep their going in the next brown as hell level. It's not until the BFG room that I run into the trouble. Again, fuck your cyberdemon placement, and I think the two spiderdemons glitched out and were unable to move sometimes. I could handle much of the rest with the BFG, but there is barely space to move around in. The open arena serves to be a better highlight in some regards, if you get rid of the arch-vile snipers and make it easier to kill the cyber snipers (unfortunately, looking for an easy way to do that wasn't an option it seemed). Getting them to die is quite tedious and the archies are obvious distractions, almost impossible without that secret invulnerability which blessed me oh so well. At least when it comes to waiting for the exit, it won't take too long, so I like that.

[rehelekretep]

2 minutes ago, NuMetalManiak said:

Was I really the only one who had an issue with MAP06's exit?

what was wrong with it? 3 key exit door right?

[NuMetalManiak]

On 6/6/2017 at 11:45 AM, NuMetalManiak said:

MAP06

 

HUGE BUG: The linedef 2773 moves a floor where a voodoo doll is in a diagonal direction instead of straight east. I was actually unable to exit the level as the voodoo doll got stuck on a wall as I pressed the three key switches. I was playing on GZDoom by the way.

I said this.

[SleepyVelvet]

Still using the 2-save rule.

 

Map08:  Spent a save immediately after the BFG encounter, and another just before the giant field-brawl.  The open field said "this is just a giant brawl, save here" before hitting the switch.

 

Map09:  After looking at the monster count, I got a bit intimidated...  Holy moly.  I painted myself in the corner the first go with the 2-save rule.  I got up to the yellow skullkey encounter but spent my saves too early beforehand.  I'm going to have to give this one a second go, and hopefully my foreknowledge up to the yellow key will help me out.  This one will be the hardest one yet...

[Demtor]

 

 

Map 08

gzDoom - UV – pistol start/saves

 

Lots of BFG “get out of jail” encounters with lots of plasma ammo and no PG that I could find. The start was rough but I enjoyed frantically scrambling with revs and lowbies to kick things off before shit gets real.

 

I love it when a map has a giantantic and quiet set up before all hell breaks loose. Almost literally. Once the extra cybes came in from below, complete chaos. I managed to find the hidden IV sphere which was only slightly useful as I wanted to kill everything and boy there were a lot of damned monsters that came pouring out of those portals. It took a long while to finally get to the last nobles. Lots of fun though.

 

I had 17 rockets left and I used every last one of them to take down those pesky AV’s behind the fences. Good bit of necessary precision under pressure. I also enjoyed getting the horde of nobles to light up the sky with a green fire, attacking the cyberdemons from below. Good stuff. Loved it and the soundtrack.

 

Once again, phenomenal sounding music. There is a part where the double bass drums kick in and the pace picks up considerably. It fucking great. I looked up to find an author per each track and came up short but I did notice the description in the text file... “Slaughter. Fun slaughter. With music. Enjoy.” LOL, well put. This wad has been a blast.

[Demtor]

11 hours ago, NoisyVelvet said:

Map09:  ....This one will be the hardest one yet...

You weren't kidding! That map is one fickle beast. Not sure when I'll have time to take a bigger bite out of it. Yikes.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP09

 

Time for big ass map like MAP21 in the original, with about 3000 or so monsters, this will be taking an incredibly long time to go through. Apparently past the "pit" in the starting room, there's two northern wings to clear. I started with the one on the right. A lot of health in this area, and thankfully, space to move around in, plus no archies makes this fun for me. The tower in the northeast though, I must be running into some invisible walls or something as I couldn't move there efficiently. This is where the blue key is, and even after the rise and fall of things and fighting the enemies inside, there's still some sort of invisible wall that might be the result of a node crapping itself.

 

Then I went to the opposite end, again with sort of the same setup, instead mancubi are down there instead of arachnotrons. The spiderdemon areas are nasty, but a good BFG shot plus rushing them will get them if infighting doesn't. With the verticality, the revenant fireballs aren't a pain either, strangely enough. The red key area is much easier than the blue key one, this time with no stupid invisible walls blocking me.

 

From when I go into the rest of the level, it gets pretty open ended. Taking it slow seems to actually do the trick, while I can't two-shot cybers, I can at least lure them into infighting. Biggest issues arise with them and the arch-viles that hang on the ledges with imps, along with outside archies hanging with two chaingunners. I'm thankful for enough rocket ammo and space, so that's good. Only hated the central maze part, where it makes itself clear that I hate mazes like this. The southern end has plenty of snipers too, so I play their game to win. Also the red and blue keycards are needed in side areas. Most of it is symmetrical, my forte apparently. Using the red and blue keys opens up the central room, an almost appropriate slaughterfest around the yellow key where circling the drain strategy wins out, at least until the arch-viles show up. Then all those invulnerabilities would come into effect by then. A very appropriate slaughtermap.

[NuclearPotato]

Catch-up time may take longer than anticipated.

 

New Gothic Movement 2: MAP06

94% kills, 0/1 secrets

 

I think this might be my favorite from the set thus far, but HOLY HELL did the difficulty get kicked up a notch.  Things start off very tame, with a fight against an assorted hoard of mooks in a temple, which seems rough when it kicks in immediately on level start, but is super tame once the initial shock wears off.  Once you get through the next encounter, a cramped fight in a boxy room with mid-tiers and a hoard of imps, and hit the switch to lower the temple walls, all bets are off.  Once you've whittled the massed hoard outside down a bit, you'll find there are two main pathways to go, each guarding a key (plus a teleporter that opens up at some point in the temple that leads to the red key. More on this later).  The blue key encounter is pretty rough, with hoards of imps, HKs, and cacos trying to box you in as a Cyberdemon camps the lift to the blue key, but ultimately, only took a few tries to clear.  The yellow key, though.  Ohhhhhh BOY, the yellow key.

 

Progressing through the yellow key area is a feat in and of itself, a step up in difficulty in this wad only matched so far by the start of MAP02.  Not only do you have a cyberdemon and a massed hoard of hitscanners to deal with, but the path to the yellow key AND the BFG are blocked by massed hoards of HKs, imps, and Revs.  Under normal circumstances, you'd be hard pressed to deal with this, with very little room to maneuver overall.

 

At least, until you remember the red key room.

 

As it happens, the red key area has an invincibility inside it, theoretically there to help handle the absurdity of the teleporting cyberdemons in that area.  But, if you're quick enough to grab the red key and hit the switch back, you can take that back to the yellow key area and drill out a foothold on the ledges, making that area SO much easier to deal with.  It's a bit of design I really love, in all honesty.  Pretty much all the remaining enemies on the map by the time I got all three keys were Masterminds and Cyberdemons, let loose after retrieving each key, so I ended up giving them a miss and exiting the level.  Aesthetically, the map author captures the feeling of an ancient ruin well, although I appreciated the lower valleys surrounding the map, giving some much needed cover against the hoard of arachnotrons, in addition to looking neat.

 

I'll try and knock out another map tonight, but I need a break right now; that was a real slobberknocker of a map before I managed to figure out its secrets (ignoring the actual, marked secret that I missed, of course).

[Nine Inch Heels]

NG2 m08:

Lot's of BFG-ing here on occasion. Infights involving cybies are what you want to trigger before moving on, repeat a couple times, clean up, done. Nice mix of smaller and larger areas.

 

NG2 m09:

The big one. In my opinion a co-op map, since the layout more or less promotes this. Other than that, lots of BFG frenzy, lots of popcorn, and a nice climactic fight in a huge circular room. The maze is not my cup of tea given the size of it, which further makes me wanna co-op this thing, since then the maze section also doesn't last as long as it did this time around.

 

NG2 m10:

Jesus fucking christ, I could write an essay about this map, that's how much played it... There are ways to play this thing nice and safe, but if you want a faster clear, you're gonna wanna roll the dice straight away. To keep it short and stuff, I'll link some older demos here, which I already improved on (just didn't wanna spam demos more than I have already):

 

 

 

 

 

I've improved my UVmax time since then by a good 25-30 seconds, but unless it's a sub 4 minute UVmax, I'm not gonna submit any more demos, because they all play pretty much the same. Getting a superfast clear depends a lot of infight-RNG, and that makes this map a bit of a pain to grind for optimal results. In my opinion, it's a really good map to let off some steam, or do some powertripping... Whatever floats your boat...

[galileo31dos01]

MAP07

Time: 26:13

Death Count: I don't even know but I don't care!!... ok 10 at least

Secrets: 2/2

 

I'm so fucking glad I tested and practiced this map in god mode many many times, because two-shot-ing Cyberdemons was hella ugh!! I wasn't even scared of them, when there are many cybers in a map and they come one after the other I just loose the fear to them.

Even having fun with that, there were certain points I really didn't enjoy that much, say the lift section, why? Because those two archviles could teleport randomly whenever they want and wherever they want, at least that is what is seemed like, causing even more trouble than those two cybers. The other part I'm not a fan of was the first imps wall with two archies, since with all those caco corpses it was hard to even see them targeting at me. Anyway, this map was very intense (yes, I know how map 08 looks like, and I read your reviews about map 09 and 10). I loved the ambient, the visuals, the caves, the details, the music is awesome like I'm listening to it right now because I didn't pay attention to it before... Ok, yes, also the feeling of being obligated to two-shot a few Cyberdemons to save ammo, umm... not a fan of that too... but at least it helped me to confront the fear of zigzagging rockets and eating one accidentally. Something about the floor that worked against me, these slippery platforms:

Spoiler

Not complaining about that, just pointing out that they worked against me yeah. Another thing, I didn't understand why there were unreachable (unless AV-jumping) energy cell packs... 

Spoiler

Good points are the invulnerability spheres provided in secrets, one after killing all the mancubus, and the other after killing all the arachnotrons. Veeeeery useful (not to say obligatory useful) to kill the last enemies. The archies really sent me to fly a few times. 

Ok what else... umm that's it, mix of nice and not-a-fan-of things in this map. NEXT!

[SleepyVelvet]

Map09 pt2:  One save before the outdoor brawl where the BFG is, another one at the yellow key fight.  That fight was the hardest one so far in the mapset, and took a a crap-ton of tries.  My winning strat was to wiggle around the center fight until you are pushed back to the peripheral ring, then just run around the edge like it's a race a racetrack.  Oh, and also get lucky, that is also part of my strategy.  There's a giant caco hallway that opens up, and a weird switch on the back of the YK thrown that I couldn't figure out how to activate; I instead just went strait to the exit.  My goal is to beat the map, not 100% it.  I enjoyed the map quite a bit.

 

Map10:  Haha! don't be fooled by the seemingly overwhelming start, there is actually a sneaky invulnerability sphere to get past the first wave, which also gives you the survivability to figure out how to grab that BFG taunting you at the beginning.  I have not probed any of these maps in god-mode, I'm basically just going in dry with only the two-save rule as support.  I'm really glad I didn't just give up.  The second wave was much harder.  Then during the third wave, because it gives you another invuln, I just pushed through some monsters and tripped over the exit accidentally.  Whatever, i'll take the win.

[Magnusblitz]

Starting to fall behind as usual...

 

MAP06

77% kills, 1/1 secret

 

Jumping into something big and open, which really helps the difficulty (I'd say this is the easiest map so far) as it accents the player's strength, ridiculous mobility. Very easy to run away from battles and restock, which I did quite a lot. Wasn't sure what I was supposed to do for the red key, so ended up just grabbing the invuln and the key and getting out instead of wasting time killing the cyberdemon. Beelined to the yellow key to use up the invuln there too. Blue key was the toughest, but just had to get the cyber distracted so I could hit the switch and run away and off to the exit. Not much to say about this one actually...