Dopaminecloud

As crudely cruel the first one was, you did have an eye for pushing the player's buttons while still providing solutions which is anything but bland. I'll be keeping an eye on your releases.

About the secret: A cybie in an open area after you've given plenty of plasma ammo is almost always fine. Only with lesser weaponry do they become a hitch in pacing (if they're directly guarding progress). As for non-linearity, I'm awful at designing open maps myself so I can't give that much insight. Linked-zone design is obviously not TRULY open but it still feels it. Perhaps the platform you need to raise to head for the red key area shouldn't be there so players can actually commit to that direction from the get go instead of having to go fish up the ssg and then being placed right next to yellow as a result. Anyway it's more non-linear than what I can do so I was still impressed lol, this is great even when not considering how early into your mapping efforts these are. Looking forward to the third, keep it up.

And beaten, great time. I went yellow key, then red key, then upper area. This is probably the easiest progression. Mostly same thoughts as last time though this format definitely benefits from the larger scale with more areas and multiple traps bleeding over into each other when you start stumbling. Secrets were similar but better hidden, I appreciate the area map because the one real sneaky secret took me a bit of wandering haha. I wonder if it'd be alright to make the reward for that one something crazier. Chances are that if you find it using the area map you're already done with at minimum 2/3rds of the map anyway. My favorite things here are the overall structure of the map; it feels much more like a goal oriented gauntlet, especially with the central exit in sight from the start and the yellow key displayed up on the hill (and I do love hill battles). And purely gameplay wise the drop-down to red key had the most frantic staggered triggering of a great deal of enemies for me which I also enjoy. Good overwatch cyber too. I had 0 ammo trouble but I did notice the plasmagun location a bit late, maybe make that stand out more (perhaps relocating the backpack that's on top of it as I think that's what made me miss it, could be a gzdoom thing though). Providing important weapons multiple times can be considered too. I don't think anyone would really miss them in this particular map, but as a future habit it's never bad to have things pop up more than once in open maps. It kills the sense of having a "right way" to go, if you're into that. I'll leave health comments to others.

Hell yes I was waiting. Played a bit of the second one now until I got archie'd. It's bigger and better but has the same DNA! Super impressive. Because of its scale I don't know if a video is a good idea for me for filesize reasons (and the fact I like to upload single-segment playthroughs with no reloads). But I will definitely post feedback once I've beaten it.

Music can be added by importing a MIDI to your wad file and giving it the relevant name! For a MAP01, name it D_RUNNIN

Radical. Also nostalgic. I did a less crazy version of this too once in the past, as I think cacodemons are the prettiest doom monster in large quantities haha. My version had a dark blue map to contrast them:

Working with Crispy Doom's brightmaps to make a noisy dark techbase. Part of a limit-removing mapset.

Great map!! Especially the initial rooms are very vibrant with monsters reacting from many directions and walls lowering around the place. The texturing is indeed repetitive but if you want to save time you should focus your landmarking through texture variation only on important locations. You've already done this for the ssg and red key room. Maybe just dress up the areas near the exit and outside the ssg room in a similar way? Could be all that's needed. Otherwise I love these visuals. It's a simplicity sweet-spot for me, very comfy. Some of the door-hallway-door stuff could be made open and function through sound-blocking lines too if you want less of a start-stop feeling to moving around the map. Just mind the sightlines when you take doors away. Two things I noted: The torches in the hallway to the redkey room will block you if you run against the edge, this is already the slowest and most cramped little bit of the map so it's best not to have decorations in the way. Then also related to this corridor, I was thinking you could have the way out of the redkey room be a different path altogether that still ends up in the room where you have the monster closet. This way the dark tight hallway has its function but doesn't overstay. These are very minor remarks though. Since you said it was balanced similarly to Underhalls I didn't pay much attention to that side of things, but it's definitely about the same on that front. I think underhalls' redkey trap puts more pressure on you though. You gave a lot of space for little resistance in your key room, especially for those that have the ssg by then (I didn't). Also no barrels! They can add a lot.

That's me winning big at caco pachinko.

Panchinko? I think I understand what people mean, usually in maps the environment is part of what's fighting against you. Some slaughter tries to erase that component and focus much more on crowd control so they give you all the space you need. This map is incredibly soft in lay-out, you'll never bump into anything, you always have a way out and even the pits won't hurt you (the main blood one is even super advantageous). That's why even with a chunky body-count the harshness isn't felt. It's definitely something that starts rearing its head once you get to a certain level of perfectly clean in level design, you lose the edge of pain and (possibly unintentional) malice in favor of communication and smooth flow. And flow smooth it does, I bumbled around a fair bit, dropping to 20% health at several points but having faith the map will let me get away with all of it and it does. Anyway the lay-out is obviously super clean, nice and dense. When I moved up to the balcony near the red key door right after hitting the switch which has a perfect view of the red key being lowered I laughed. Everything just clicks like that. Candle hints, torch markers, highlighted items in sight from most parts of any given room. All the fundies. Have you done any non-linear maps? Applying your skill to something more open would be magical to witness.

I like how you used the initial steady flow of lost souls and cacodemons to set the tempo up a bit. Item grabbing in some of the rooms was a bit sporadic, feels a bit like pacman which isn't my thing, I like when it feels like a decision to head for something. I had fun running around making everything mad though. Hitting all the switches and dealing with the consequences, there's plenty of resources to be reckless. Cute secrets too.

Very cool! I'll echo that the death pits seem to be more cruel than anything else in the map because you're so generous with health so it does feel like a platformer map as a result. While the outer area can be a death pit because the running is easy there, for the central pit you may wanna put an elevator or something. Falling is plenty punishing by itself. Combat is simple, spacious n snappy, no complaints but not much thinking required either, just satisfying. Great effort for a speedmap. Also check that tight ammo balancing, well done on that:

Single level as the title suggests. Though initially crafted because I wanted to put together my own doom 1 episode wad, I realized I was going overboard with this one so I'm not sure if it has place in such a thing haha. The other 4 maps made for it so far are much more traditional and I'd feel bad to spike the difficulty like that, even as a finale.

My light for general areas hovers around 80-144, only highlights and light sources exceeding these. I like darkness and I think it's better to have everything be dark before deciding where to brighten up than vice versa.

I had just beaten it with a save when you revealed the soulsphere secret. I believe that chaingunner/rev fight is the hardest in the map and it cools down a lot afterwards, so while it's possible to do without the secret it's very tricky and I may not have gotten the single-segment without it. Definitely make it a bit more obvious or even just outright give it, I still managed to get brought back down to 50% anyway. Fun-wise I think the yellow-key is the best, followed by the opening room and then the chaingun fight. The short bit after you sprint over the blood platforms is neat too but everything else at this point becomes shooting gunners around a corner, which is like a well deserved rest but I don't know if that's what you were going for.