baja blast rd.

Yeah I'm probably not going to waste time going for 18 unless I find something fun to run. I really need to do something productive for a change. :P

All Hell Map01 UV-Max in 1:16 The custom enemies are silly, especially that chaingunner. ah01-116.zip

Screw this map. 1killtng map03 UV-Max in 3:00 1k03-300.zip

Map28 and Map29 in megawads should be small techbases. With former human troopers that have 5000 HP and use rapid-fire BFGs.

Wait, he is? I thought he was a lower-sensitivity mouser (not everyone has manic sensitivity like me :D). Edit: Yeah he uses a mouse for sure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTQdl_db_NE

The last fight is one of those warp-ins that feels a bit naked because it uses only two (or three, if you count the manc) vectors in such an open space. Compare this to the opening scenario, where there are monsters basically everywhere and on everything. Cinematic caco clusters are often used in warp-ins like this, but I say cinematic, because they aren't threatening at all. So I think that fight could use more threats (no distant revenants or anything, though): 1) Mixed clusters of low-tiers: hitscanners w/ imps and pinkies. 2) Additional revs, maybe on the crates that are laying around (good way to tie in the scenery with the action). 3) An extra manc or two hanging around the exit (but not necessarily fixed in place to block it). 4) An archvile, if there's a place to introduce it fairly (like not somewhere on the ground where it's very possible to be caught without cover if you don't know it's out there). I did enjoy the map. The start clusterfuck is my favorite, reminds me of a much lighter version of the beginning of AA's map26 actually.

map28 I hate that I'm going to dislike BOTH guest submissions by an author, but I actually enjoyed most of the fights. It's just that a few things rubbed me the wrong way: 1) Basically every part where you can walk on the damaging sky looks hacky and weird. A lot more so in this level than in the many mid-e2 levels where you can, because the sky is framed neatly in those levels, usually as a sort of angular void pool, whereas in map28 it's the actual outer bound of the level. 2) I didn't use two of the megapsheres before the final fight (a fight that I thought was cool), so I was rewarded by . . . not actually being able to realistically access those megaspheres before the battle was practically over. Kind of rubs me the wrong way when maps punish you for not needing health. For example, if I had 37% health and 25% armor, I would have picked up the megasphere, but with ~120% and 100%, I'd decide to hold off for a moment and then end up getting punished by having a lot less health and armor to work with. That sort of thing is pretty unfair. I think it's really important, especially in a mapset like this, where the player might frequently have a lot of health and armor and decide not to top off at every opportunity, to make sure powerups remain usable if they are skipped. Otherwise what's the point in playing well. 3) While I was making the BFG revenant horde and cyberdemon infight (this is another encounter where I didn't have to fire more than one or two shots) I was randomly attacked by a couple of archviles. I'm not even sure how or when or where the archviles were released -- I was attacked at a spot where I had gone many times while waiting for the cyber to thin out the revs, and it happened like a couple of minutes into the infighting. I didn't hear an alert sound or anything. Luckily I was close enough to a power-up.

I've been replaying map17 occasionally because it has become one of my favorite maps from the set. Here's a playthrough I was using as a warm-up for map28 that ended up having a bit of occasional hilarity. http://www.mediafire.com/download/r1ravw1vowlnt1w/aaliensrc3b_17_rdwpa_warmup.lmp Forgot to pick up the 'zerk and soulsphere at the start. BFG shot in the YK fight was hilariously inefficient -- hey let's shoot in the one place where we'll hit almost nothing. A cutely ambitious two-shot attempt and getting hit by a cyber rocket from across the map (where the hell WAS that cyber -- it was using stealth mode or something, because I had just looked over there).

You're playing rc3a.

Links to which files? If you need Sunder.wad, you can get it at DSDA: http://doomedsda.us/lmps/1193/Sunder.zip

Thanks for this. Most dangerous part of the cyber fight appears to be those automatically lowering lifts -- pretty distracting. From watching the first minute of the map25 vid, that secret PR fight makes a LOT more sense now, hahaha. How do you record videos, with a screen-recording program or with -viddump? Latter takes quite a long time even for tiny demos.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/q2hh7dft1sl01ym/pt62_rdwpa_demo.lmp Demo for that map, is an FDA from after the first fight, which I played the other day. Action seems to slow down a bit after the start, but the 'zerk trap and the Pinchyr trap were cool. RK chaingunner warp-in is pretty mean. I was lucky that basically none of them opened fire immediately. Ending is quite tame compared to the rest of the designed encounters. I was expecting an AV or some PEs with all those rockets. The gray stairs back to the 32-high central ledges could use a texture that is bordered on top; as is they blend in really well with the ledges and it took me a while to notice I could get back up.

map27 I wanted to really like this map -- not just like it, which I did, but really like it -- but I spend so much time lost. I didn't remember what all the teleporters did, so for example when I wanted to go back to pick up the soulsphere when I finally could use it, I had to brute force a few teleporters until I boarded the one that took me there. It feels like a bit of a breather map. Only the double-AV encounter felt dangerous, although the HK barrel silliness did represent a moment where I could have conceivably messed up and gotten killed, and a few other encounters (archvile + two AD heads, early PE + AD heads) were scary, at least. A big part of why I liked this map is that it's quite relaxing. Stewboy's track certainly has something to do with that, and I can imagine skillsaw in his mapping command control sending out the order for a relaxing track with the specific intention of creating a breather map. Early on this struck me as a somewhat by-the-numbers map, but this is the first time in the mapset that (extremely light) platforming has played a big role in the designed combat, and it's also the first time where the UFOey side areas have a significant amount of <3 incidental combat <3. Then it went back to feeling like a typical skillsaw map, but with a focus on small- to mid-scale close-quarter battle instead of mid- to large-scale projectile hell, a callback to e1 with a different monster composition: a lot fewer (dangerously placed) hitscanners, more revs and mancs, plasma troopers. There are two encounters where you can hurl rockets at archviles from really long range, accurately too, and I really enjoyed that. Those floating tablets are also pretty cool. Like map25 it does feel like a bit of an oddball, but not in a bad way.

Three demos for this: http://doomedsda.us/wad1713.html 1) UV-Max in 1:06 2) UV-Respawn in 0:46 3) UV-Fast in 0:56 The UV-Max was accidentally recorded with -complevel 2 instead of 4 and Doom 2 instead of TNT, if you don't want to count that. Obvious point-whoring is obvious. whithoudemos.zip

Early this month I was called "cautious" or "careful" basically unprompted about three times in a one-week span when I posted FDAs for levels. I just don't understand that type of comment, really; at first I didn't mind, but it's getting quite annoying.

I'd be interested in reading accounts of how you collaborated with other people on individual maps (preferably), or on mapsets. Who did what, what was planned and what eventually happened, etc. It might be something I decide to try at some point.

The cool thing about map25's music is that the rhythm of the arpeggiated figuration and the melody (and that arpeggios are used at all) really complements the rotating descending tubes somehow. I don't know how, but just looking at the opening scene, and listening to the music, it fits so well. Evokes circularity, or something.

Working on a wad for Memfis.

4marches UV-Max in 0:51 The 0:55 has prettier rev trolling. :) 4mar-051.zip

Anyway, thanks 4sb for doing this. It was a nice impetus for practice, and I had a lot of fun with the maps that weren't horseshitty.

4marches UV-Max in 0:55

This makes sense.

Criticism: 1. That Mastermind is silly. (Mouldy reminded me of the arrow too; not a fan of things like that.) 2. Music is GOATish obv, which is starting to be par for the course in e3, but there's a part that starts at 1:25 reminds me of that Christmas song that goes parumpuhpum or whatever. The motif recurs a couple of times, with some variations. It's this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryaB5MHVUZM. Kind of pulls me out of being immersed.

map26 No play-by-play because I didn't feel like stopping. The set pieces are decent -- my favorite was the caco + shitstorm pairing in the plasma rifle area -- but the <3 incidental combat <3 and the :@ traps :@ are really what make this map so fun and juicy. The start is basically a race against time to kill off as many bald buttmunches as you can while trying to ignore the fat buttmunches and not wake up the skinny fiery buttmunches. On the way, you might also encounter a few of the partially invisible plasma-shooting buttmunches, which must be killed with prejudice too. INSIGHTFUL ANALYSIS. But yeah, basically, shoot at the dangerous things. The thing about partial invisibility is that it inverts a lot of the usual tactics in projectile-heavy maps. Normally in these fights, you absolutely should not be running at full speed as a default. But when you have to deal with lots of mancs -- the third most dickish monster to force the partially invisible player to fight behind cybers (lol) and 'trons -- and also an occasional scattering of revs and HKs, it actually now makes sense to run fast, simply as a way of always staying clear of the possible shooting angles of a drunk monster's fireball. Couple that with chaingunners that you absolutely should try to get rid of ASAP before your invisibility wears off, and with occasional archviles and tenuous cover that's often some distance from where they are released, and you have a map that "forces you to stay moving" more often and more frenetically than basically anything in the set yet. (Okay maybe that was actually insightful.) The secrets in this map are really powerful: there's a soulsphere, a megapshere, and a BFG! Despite the overall dickishness of most of the map, those secrets are basically freebies. The megasphere is a total freebie, if you can find the soulsphere. Kind of interesting. I actually wonder if Tarnsman was "encouraged" to add those. (It'd be a shame if something happens to your map slot!) Wrt to the archvile quartet at the exit, I think the BFG-less player is obligated to keep silent and use the monsters that are released via the switch sequence to distract at least two of the viles. The other viles can then be rocketed or plasma'd quickly enough. Alternatively, the BFG-less player can attempt to gtfo as quickly as possible. Anyway, it's cool that ranter Tarnsman dabbles in mapping too. Good stuff. LOL

Please don't upload this filth to DSDA -- this one is just for the thread. What a fucking ugly run. Map03 of http://doomedsda.us/wad32.html UV-Max in 3:06. Ugggggh. 1k03-306_complevel2_glboom214_loltodstylefilename.zip