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Thanks @Cammy for the update! Looking forward for news in June and the new project thread thus ... What would be interesting though: was the MAP14 slot finally registered for me or did somebody take it? Just to know if I'd finish that track or not ...

Thanks! At least it's in the correct subforum now. I renew my offer to help with the project, if there's any help needed. As of now there seems to be only one completely unclaimed slot left, MAP06 (I had claimed MAP14 but Xulgonoth didn't refresh the start page). I don't know if something for MAP30 was started (I haven't entered the Discord, I hate Discord with passion ...) Those slots claimed but still (according to the start page) not finished are: MAP03 @NeilJohnRips MAP15 @Varis Alpha MAP32 @LPad MAP18 @RogueAkai MAP21 @SynDoom MAP23 @Cammy MAP25 @Xulgonoth Maybe it would be cool to hear from them if they're still working on these midis (some claimed them as early as 2021, SynDoom doesn't even appear as an username ...) , and if someone has communicated privately with the original or the current project leadership. :)

Any news about this project? Is there another thread anywhere due to the change in leadership? (I just searched in @Cammy's contributions but didn't find anything ..) I made something for MAP14, needs a little polishing but could finish it in ... a few days. :)

I'm generally of those who like this style. However, in a megawad it should not be the one and only style, as it can become tiring. Sunlust did it exactly right, imo. For the question "who started it" there could be another candidate besides Alien Vendetta: In Eternal Doom MAP05 by Sverre Kvernmo, most of the last section is (almost) completely in blue and black. It's meant as a futuristic section with a "time gate". So it's possible that this trope in one or another way is around since the start of Doom modding. However, I think Alien Vendetta (AV also in MAP31 "Killer Colours") and Deus Vult may have started the association with "harder" maps. One could perhaps cite Hell Revealed MAP26 too for the idea of a hard map in the void. It is generally much more colorful, but has an underground 3-color section (blue-red-black) with quite stark color contrasts.

First fix published: trypophobia-0.1.zip - Texture misalignments in the starting room should now be solved, I had to add some elements to hide the lower part of the wall below the window, due to the difference in brick "thickness" from outside and inside which made alignment in this section a pain :(. - The mechanism of the passage after the "jump into the hole"/berserk section which did not work in some ports has been changed. Linedef action is now 38. The floors now lower slower, but I changed the monster lineup so some of them will teleport in already while they're lowering. - More variation for the trees in the woods in the big outdoor area. - Linedef 1625 texture fix (lift up to the balcony in the northwest was inconsistent) - An bug in the first big indoor area of the hellish part was fixed (was a byproduct of a last minute change probably). - Basic text file added.

Thank you for your suggestions, much appreciated! I'll try to post a fix of the things your mentioned in the first rooms + the sector problem in the passage between outdoor and indoor area, and will look if I can improve the trees like you wrote (later today or tomorrow). You're totally right that the lack of a shotgun is intended in the zombiemen fight, and it should be spicy :) Yep, this is a quite unconventional design decision - most "dark holes", tunnels etc. will damage/kill you in this map, either by damaging floors when you enter them or by other means hidden in them :) I was thinking at first how to signpost this, but I think it should become clear after the player has tried to enter the first two tunnels. Edit: I've looked at the linedef problem in the passage and the issue is that linedef action 82 (or 38, as W1 would be even better) are not fast enough, while 98 was perfect and it seems the only vanilla floor down action with /fast. I may have to reconsider the gameplay in that area, maybe activating two or three monsters earlier so the player doesn't get bored until the floor lowers. Will bump the thread when the fix is published.

Plutonia 3. :) (I unironically enjoyed some of the maps. It's like a weird a leisure trip, and some maps have nice Boom mechanisms to explore. Most maps have so few monsters and so much ammo/health you can blast em away without a single thought about resources or combat strategies, so it's very close to a walking simulator. There are some weird zombies though lol.)

Do you fear holes? Try Trypophobia for a cure by exposition! IWAD: freedoom2.wad (tested with 0.12 and git trunk). Will NOT run properly with doom2.wad!* I highly recommend the Git version as it has some nice new monster sprites. Download automated build from soulsphere.org Download Freedoom IWAD 0.12.1 (doesn't have the new monsters) Port: Limit-removing (tested with prboom-plus) Size and layout: Mid to large. Classic "horseshoe" with mostly linear progression and exploratory-adventure style. Gameplay style: More setpieces than incidental combat, with freewheeling slaughter-lite encounters towards the end. Some progression puzzles, but nothing really obscure, all mechanisms are well known. Difficulty: Punchy but not hardcore. Slightly above Plutonia, close to late Valiant/Alien Vendetta. About 400 monsters on Extreme-Carnage (UV). Difficulty settings are rudimentarily implemented and tested. Extreme-Carnage (UV/hard) is meant to be a bit challenging and sometimes even a bit dickish. Bring On The Pain (HMP/normal) has some of the difficulty spikes flattened and a bit more health and ammo, and Will it hurt? (HNTR/easy) is a bit more casual - recommended for those not liking slaughter that much. Music: One of my favorite Freedoom tracks, "Dreamcatcher", from Freedoom2 MAP27. (Unfortunately I don't know who composed it, so I may have to add all the Freedoom credits to the final zip file ...). I may add an original midi but that's still not decided. Coop: Should work, not tested. What's left: Some lighting and texture alignment. Gameplay should be mostly "final", at least ready for playtesting. *If you really, really want to run it with the Doom2 iwad, you can probably make it run with the freedoom-textures pwad from Freedoom 0.8. Completely untested! Description: The idea was to create an atmospheric environment for the Freedoom monsters to "feel like home". Most of them are earthly or waterly alien-creatures inspired by invertebrates like jellyfish or worms, or reptiles like lizards, so a mostly natural map with cave/hellish theme would fit. They look also like monsters that could emerge from holes, so the Trypophobia idea was born. An inspiration for the intended atmosphere (with very different layout) was Valiant's Candlecove. This is my first publicly shared map (with the exception of a joke map you can find here: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2258691). Download: trypophobia-0.1.zip Screenshots: Known problems/bugs: Other notes (includes spoilers!):

I've seen that mainly to access secrets, apart from E4M6. Regarding the original question: I don't remember any mapset doing that specifically. One could argue that Plutonia's difficulty curve peaks around the middle (9, 10, 15, 32) and then slowly lowers again, being MAP28 and 29 two of the easiest maps. I kinda like that. But of course maps 01-05 are not among the hardest. What I would find interesting would be a transition from "big and easy" to "small and hard". For example, starting with something like Darkwave0000's maps in Speed of Doom, and ending with something more similar to Swift Death.

MAP04 of Three's a Crowd could be another example. A part of the hazardous sea is "walkable", but some buildings can only entered via teleports and jumps. Has a bit of Mt. Erebus feeling, but most buildings are in the lava lake, not on a big island.

MAP30: The Great Filter (DNF) A puzzle variant of the IoS fight, which is not difficult to decrypt, but execution is not trivial. There are quite many monster spawners and also cyberdemons as additional opposition. Basically it's a timed switch hunt which allows access to a Romero head in the center of the map, and the timing is quite tight. Better than the normal iOS fight, but not outstanding. I didn't have the time and patience today to beat the map, maybe somewhen later. :) Rating: 6/10 Difficulty: probably around 6/10 Final Thoughts Down the Drain is a mapset with a lot of character. It is full of creativity and experimental gameplay ideas. About half of the maps feel totally unique, be it due to their layout, their combat or some (generally not difficult but sometimes a bit weird) puzzles. It's obvious that this approach would create many experiences which are a hit-or-miss depending on the personal gameplay preferences of everybody. But as I tend to appreciate more puzzle-ish, "cryptic" maps, I was mostly fine with them, with some exceptions. For example, I didn't like MAP31 so much (my -100 rating was of course a joke, I'd rate it 5/10 or 6/10, as it at least achieved to get me finishing it), while loving MAP19 which most other club members hated. The first couple of maps were quite fun but still didn't convince me fully, but the increasing level of uniqueness and creativity gave me eventually (at latest at MAP08, which is the first really outstanding one) a kind of addictive "flow" where I often played several maps in a row just being curious what neat concept the next map would feature. The closest experience to this I had was maybe Three's a Crowd, which is a little bit closer to "mainstream" but got me also into this "curiosity flow". I liked also the pacing of the mapset. After a bunch of experimental maps, sometimes with obscure or foreknowledge-requiring progression, often breather maps were provided which brought back a (slightly) more conventional kind of Doom fun, and they were generally well made. MAP27 and MAP28 were the standouts of this map type for me. The foreknowledge topic isn't so much a problem for me, as I would play most maps with saves and thus bad decisions could always be rewinded. Also I didn't mind the "ugliness" so much, although some, particularly later maps were even beautiful in an IWADesque style. Some maps are definitely in the category which I would later try saveless (as a quite bad player I generally reserve this challenge for maps I really liked or are low hanging fruits), but I had no time for this this month. Don't know if everything was intended, but I found it interesting that in many cases two or more maps which followed each other were connected by a kind of common theme or topic. This could be a visual/layout element (the big corridors in the bunker techbase part, "mountains" in 19-20, extreme linearity in 21-22, "circular" layout in 27-28) or a gameplay element (vile hordes in 26-27, rev/HK infighting in 28-29). This gave a quite cohesive feeling to the wad. As someone has already written: the mapset is more as the sum of its parts. Thus my general rating is higher than the average of the maps' score I gave them after playing, as I consider it quite unique. I would like to see more of this kind of megawads. The accesibility of Doom mapping invites to experiment with weird gameplay ideas I would never see in an AAA shooter. What I don't know is if playing "real" shovelware would give me a similar kind of experience. From the 90s, I played mainly the classics and some stuff of mappers I really liked, like Jim Flynn and Paul Schmitz, and some single maps like Hordes.wad or The Puzzler. They had sometimes a similar kind of weirdness, but at least Flynn and Schmitz were known for their unconventional ideas back then afaik. Maybe I'll dive fully into the shovelware world somewhen. Although the few Community Chests (1 and 2) I played gave me partly a bit a similar feeling even if they were slightly newer. The difficulty of Down the Drain is often close to what is often described as "modern standard", close to WADs like BTSX, or to Plutonia. I liked the difficulty progression, which starts already with a punchy MAP01, then very slowly increases until the secret maps, later never surpassing this level. The final stretch was almost underwhelmingly easy, with the exception of MAP30. There are outliers to both sides of the difficulty curve, the most notable being of course MAP31, which should be a quite hard challenge to do saveless. Rating: 9/10 Difficulty: 5/10 (Difficulty: 1 - Trivial, 5 - Plutonic, 7 - Hard, 10 - For Doom Gods) Best maps: MAP15, MAP19, MAP17, MAP08, MAP27, MAP28 Hardest maps: MAP31, MAP23, MAP17, MAP16, maybe also MAP30 due to the tight switch sequence. (Played: UV difficulty, pistol starts, saves.)

MAP27: Lakeside Rentals This map reminded me a bit of Cydonia which the club played a short time ago, and is a quite Plutonic map with many likable ambushes. You have to follow a circular path around a damaging lava lake, and monsters emerging from different types of closets or corners will make Doomguy work to reach his goal. At the center of the lake, two times an island with archviles will emerge eventually. The encounters are quite varied, from the "wow so much meat" ambush at the BFG to the cat-and-mouse play with the single viles in the area following, up to even a crusher fight. Very fun. Rating: 9/10 Difficulty: 6/10 MAP28: Closing Crush The theme of roughly circular map layouts continues. Here we have an one-way loop with two alternate paths. We start in a small outdoor hellish rock area surrounded by three caves (one of them will split in two corridors), which will all lead to a second courtyard with several meaty and dangerous monsters. The grey rock path will allow you to realize a full loop; the SSG staircase is an alternative as a slightly shorter path to the second courtyard. Both paths end in elevated balconies letting you jump down but not climb up, and if you enter the building you'll reach the start again via the third (red rock) cave. The first challenge is to clear the first area with limited ammo, but as most monsters are HKs and revenants infighting will do the trick. Then you'll want to clear two areas with archviles, getting now finally some better supplies like a large stash of rockets. Finally you are ready to loop through the map and take care of the rest of its population, and it eventually will open up with additional connections between both outdoor areas. The map is a ton of fun if you like moving around in a semi-pacifist style and incite chaos everywhere. There's also an hidden invul to help you with this task, and a radsuit secret to access a part with lava safely. Rating: 8,5/10 Difficulty: 5/10 MAP29: Choke LOL, that one made me remember these battle simulators "Jesus vs. 3000 Godzillas" or similar from a couple of years ago. Two identical fortresses are populated by our most popular infighters (one by hell knights and one by revenants), and inside of each of them you'll not only find a key crucial to escape, but also a cyberdemon and the bigger weapons. At the start you get only the SSG, so infighting is the way to go in the first part, until you can squeeze inside one of the fortresses and gather RL and BFG, or liberate the cyb to do some work for you. If this is not enough, then there is also an invul in a secret, but you have to first run through a long cavern so its useful time will be limited, nice troll move. Strange that no vile was put in here as a surprise enemy near the end, I had expected at least a couple of them. Cute concept but I think to really like it I would have expected a little bit more variation. Rating: 6/10 Difficulty: 4/10

MAP25: The Three Buffets Good move to put a short and punchy map after the long journey that was MAP24. Here Doomguy swims in ammo from the start on and you get SSG and RL early, but a certain switch will end many blind runs (including my first attempt). Many imps are in the starting area; it could be so pleasant to kill them if these wall-doors wouldn't close all the time and if their activation didn't require a run to the SSG area again and again ... Later midtiers join the party, and you get the pleasant chance to rocket a group of caged viles without risk. Eventually barons will appear, depending when you activate "that" switch. A funny section requires a straferun to a switch on damaging floors, with several soulspheres to counter the damage, and will release cacodemons. Two areas stand out combat-wise: one is the library near the not-so-secret megaaarmor with a vile duo and chaingunners, although I found a cheesing mechanic (don't fall in the megaarmor liquid too early ...). The other one is the baron trap near the start, which is probably only beatable with the plasma rifle in hand; perhaps with 200/200 and luck it can be done with rockets or even punching but the SSG is too slow. A lot of mindless fun to be had in this map, and it's probably meant as a breather before the last stretch. It has the character of a joke map parodizing shovelware, I think, very much like MAP14. Rating: 8/10 Difficulty: 5/10 MAP26: Everyone Loves the Beach Another short map, again quite punchy. Above 100 monsters are stuffed in a single, relatively small rocky arena at a hellish lava beach. So this until now is definitely the map which reminds most of Benjogami's oeuvre in the slaughtermap genre. The concept is quite simple: Health and ammo are plentiful and the BFG is accessible once you reach the shore, but getting these goodies is not free: they're located on barriers and islands in the damaging lava ocean, and also (if I understood the mechanism right) everytime you cross to the islands some viles are released. The viles are the main foes you'll have to concentrate on, so try to kill at least a couple of them with each loop to the megasphere/cell islands. And more of them will complicate things when you take the blue key. Once I understood the concept I found the map to be much easier than it seems initially due to the abundance of goodies, i.e. not harder than the previous ones. The cyberdemon is clearly your ally and will probably die eventually, and the other monsters are varied enough to produce a lot of infighting, although barons can enclose you if you get asleep somewhere camping. I liked it, although it's one of the more conventional offerings of the set. It's very much a spiritual brother of MAP32 (and of course, of other ammo/health-cache-themed maps from Nirvana on). Rating: 8/10 Difficulty: 5/10

A few words to MAP02 to MAP05: I liked MAP02's visuals and lighting, although the weird usage of door and switch textures for walls persists. The pain elemental room is a bit cruel, it seems the best strategies are 1) camping or 2) run to the plasma rifle and return, but 2) requires foreknowledge. In one of my play attempts the door before the intersection leading to the PEs was closed. I guess this was due to me shooting the Keen in the starting room? MAP03 seemed visually nice and becomes challenging if you run around for too long without knowing what to do (as some of the water is damaging), but once you know where the exit is it becomes also very easy, just like MAP01. MAP04 - I couldn't pass the first corridor, there is a cement block which is too high for Doomguy to be walked over. Looking at the editor there seems also not to be a switch to lower it. Is jumping required here or is this a bug? Looks quite nice at the automap though. MAP05 - Has several problems. First, there are big rooms with hitscanners in them, which in modern map design is almost considered an anti-pattern ... There's also a caged baron which provides almost no threat and is very difficult to take out. A third problem is the spider room. The spiders often will block access to it if you alert them too early. Consider sound block lines here. There's also an optional room with almost nothing in it. Anyway I don't dislike this map, I liked the area with the water a bit. But it seems the exit is the Stallman head in the middle of the map, and if you advance too much you simply get stuck and die. To be honest the mapset looks a bit like it was created procedurally. I get it from the OP that it was meant to be weird, but it has some strange design choices and/or bugs. Anyway, had fun :)

+++ H2H-Xmas