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Map07 "Tarnished Luster" by Pegleg I have mixed feelings about this one. It does feel more amateurish than the previous maps, despite it not being necessarily bad. The major issue that seems to apply to every fight is that there are too many monsters proportional to their threat level, meaning 40% of the map is just an uninteresting clean-up job. The first battle with the Zombieman snipers is kinda strange and harmless and ineffective. The second encounter was by far my favorite, juggling a horde of Pinkies on two fronts while watching out for snipers and roaming Imps / Revs is fun and frantic, especially considering it's huge scale. I also always tend to appreciate it when mappers release the chunkier snipers at the end of a fight, it makes dealing with them less annoying (that said, I think three Cybs would've done the job as well, or more Revenants to infight with them, I was left just circlestrafing them for a few minutes, dumping my entire Cell & Shell supplies into them). The finale is - blegh - not threatening at all if you escape the room early, which appears to be the intended way of dealing with it, and while I didn't go for 100% kills, picking off all the Arachnos & Mancubi sounds like a chore. There's definitely some bright moments, but it's a bit too rough around the edges for me to really enjoy it.

map06 "Slaughter Factory" by Guardsoul Slaughter Factory is an enjoyable little romp, much more open than the previous maps and clearly coming from another school of mapping, at least it felt like it. Most of the fights here don't exert as much pressure as I'd like them too, it's mostly just a matter of being aware of your surroundings, and that's playing on UV without knowing how to get the BFG. I think some snipers on the cliffsides would've helped with that, or tighter resource balancing. It's hard to get killed here unless you screw up majorly, but that said, it's also fun to just run around and kill demons from time to time. The finale was once again my favorite, the Archvile / PE combo is a really nasty surprise when you're not expecting it and, even on my second attempt, the fight was still interesting to manage.

map03 "Cherry Blossom" by Danlex I love pink, just in general, and I think it's very underrepresented in Doom, which is mostly due to how Doom's restrictive palette makes everything pink look grey or brown at lower light levels, which doesn't look all too nice if you're not going for a fleshy, rotten kinda look. This map is mostly a bright pink, so it's obvious that I love it's visuals. The combat is also great, the first fight caused me much more trouble than anything after that point, for some reason. The final battle is of course my favorite as I really enjoy BFG spam and it seemed to hit that sweet spot for me in terms of difficulty. One thing I've noticed is that I'm being drowned in ammo atm, even on UV. Awesome map. map04 "Floody Hell" by Lord_Z Floody Hell is really chill in comparism to the last two maps, the combat doesn't feel all that slaughtery tbh, but there was still enough ammo conservation going on to make the fights not boring. The finale was particularly enjoyable, navigating around foes in tight-ish spaces while only really interacting with them passively is still pretty engaging to me. Visually, it doesn't feel as fleshed out as the previous maps, but the color coordination is quite nice and it does it's job as an early-wad warm-up. map05 "Marble in the Blood" by Liberation My favorite map so far. I tend to like it when battles have multiple phases, be that through the environment changing or the timed release of monsters - and Marble in the Blood does all of that. The first encounter was fairly difficult for me, but also exiting with it's four surprise Archviles. Second battle stood out to me for it's cool usage of damging liquids, though it could stand to be been a lot meaner, perhaps make the floor 20-damaging, I didn't die here at all. The theme was also interesting, ominous marble temples inside a dark forest, and HR2 music is also appreciated, even if I don't like the remix quite as much as the original.

I'm not sure if I'll do the entire month, I have a lot of exams and presentations coming up. But I'll most definitely play through MSCP and beat Haste in private later on. map01 "Fire In Your Eyes" by Dreadopp A friendly and appealing opener. The first thing I noticed was the nice environment. I am, truth be told, not the biggest fan of OTEX, but I sure do love my rocky cliffsides. Combat is definitely on introductory level, difficulty-wise, but in contrast to last month, I probably won't be saying this very often. The extremely straightforward progression and snappy fights are also a welcome relief from CC, with my favorites being the Revenants and Mancubi ambushes near the end. I'd say this map is quite enjoyable and it's probably one of the most tepid maps of this month, so I'm looking forward to this. map02 "Viridescent Synapse" by Bauul Another breezy map with impressive views despite having an extremely simple layout, and definitely more engaging than the last one. It's just two fights, RL only. Maneuvering around crowds of demons in semi-cramped spaces while needing to conserve ammo is among my favorite encounter types, so I love the beginning. The second battle is cool too, this one actually took me a few tries before I came up with a decent strategy and I like the usage of shoot-through walls. This map might be simple to the point of feeling almost low-effort, but I still had a great time and it achieves what it sets out to do. Good shit!

I'm incredibly sorry about this, but a certain bugged uninstallment executable-related accident took my map for 30 monsters and I was smart enough to not make any backups :C Gonna drop an old screenie and leave it at that:

Okay, finally, finally. Map29 "Citadel at the Edge of Eternity" by Magikal I wanted to do the joke, right, where I post a screenshot of the results screen and say something along the lines of "Decent map, a bit long.", but Nights already kinda beat me to it, so oh well. Everybody has said it already, but this map is long, tedious, awkward, grindy, cryptic and unbalanced and I don‘t wanna repeat everything. It subverted my expectations, I'm usually able to push through most "fearsome" maps fairly efficently, even the ones that everybody hates, but this map really destroyed me. I can't describe how unbelievably draining and exhausting it was to play, I can totally respect anybody who decides to give up here. The first proper stage with the balconies, the weird doors that can only be opened from one side, the timed switches, seemingly random walk-over-line puzzles and those ridiculous hidden Chaingunners is such a drag. Same goes for the elevator section, though fighting Revs, Barons and Chaingunners on narrow walkways was somewhat interesting. The bigger fights are surprisingly fun, that Pinky / Baron horde with the sniping revenants, the vicious quadruple PE ambush and the Chaingunner / Revenant trenches are not bad at all. Magikal can definitely stage a decent fight when he feels like it. The ending is also cool, I guess, but after three hours of trudging through awful puzzles, I can't really appreciate it anymore. Plus I didn't find the backpack, which means it was more so an awkward infighting / ammo conservation exercise. This map's scope is pretty amazing for the early 2000s and it's obvious Magikal spent a lot of time on it, but I have zero fondness for it and I wouldn't recommend playing it without reason. Map30 "Evil Itself" by Thomas Van der Valden Cute, short, painless. Appreciate it, but there's very little to talk about, especially after my brain has been stomped into a fine pastry. Comprehensive, objectively correct tier list along with some closing thoughts. As you can see, quite the uneven distrubution, and that's how I feel about CC in general. If you only want to play the - mostly good - maps, I'd recommend playing E2 as it was most consistently fun for me. E1 is also alright, but I don't recommend playing E3 unless you really have a lot of time on your hands. The three most common things that a lot of maps suffered from were lame action, confusing progression and being too long, with the last one in particular being really detrimental to my overall experience. CC was still nowhere near as bad as I expected it to be and it might be worth a play if you're patient and are interested in wads of historical value. +++ MSCP & Haste

Uh uh uh uh uh uh

I'd guess you're allowed to post a second map, but you'd still have to beat the map above you & I wouldn't recommend deleting any of your maps, it might still be interesting for some people.

Can't access the file for some reason, DW says it can't locate it. Try uploading it on Google Drive again, perhaps? Edit: Thanks, it works now, but it ends with a death, which I suppose isn't intentional.

@El Inferno elspdemo.zip Here's a messy UV-max. The beginning is definitely the hardest part, earned me quite a few deaths when practicing. Highlights for me are the tiny bits of platforming and the HK fight. The marble temple at the end felt a little clunky to approach, but aside from that this map was good fun! Map Title: Way Grimoire Specifics: Doom 2, map01, cl 9 Difficulty settings are implemented Music: Vile Flesh map18 because I couldn't think of anything better Custom textures are from cc4-tex & me, the sky is from Eradrop's sky box pack Screenies: I went a little over one hour balancing the fights for lower difficulties, which I think is okay, considering how that's optional for speedmaps anyways. A slaughter-ish kinda map, the title is a remnant of an idea where you could choose the monsters you'd encounter in the final battle, which I realized belatedly was too ambitous for a 1-hour speedmap. UV is definitely aimed at more experienced players, so you might wanna consider playing on HMP or HNTR. The difficulty is pretty comparable to ElInferno's submission. Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10l5v6Ap3WbvlhSvf7GdpTzmKlgkRXSB2/view?usp=sharing

Map28 "Necrophobia" by Gene Bird I can only agree with most other voices here in that this is one of, if not the best Gene Bird map in this set. The first few rooms don't make much of an impression, admittedly, but after enduring a bit of corridor shooting, Necrophobia develops into a fun little switch hunt with relaxed, but not unengaging combat, thanks to the much higher usage of verticality, snipers, monsters attacking from different directions and the occasional trap to keep you on your toes. (I also noticed the teleport ambushes working far better than back in Map32, they are a lot snappier now!) It's still a bit basic, but one can see a decisive increase in sophistication in this map, coming from The Citadel or even Monster Mansion. Not much more to say, this is a fun, brisk and appreciated breather before a certain Map29. Nice work, @Searcher ^ v^

Map27 "Afterlife" by Sphange This is mostly due to @finnks13 giving me tips over Discord, but I didn't think this map was that bad. It's probably my favorite of Sphange's maps in this set, mainly because of the combat feeling a lot more engaging, nice use of snipers, hitscanners and crampage (what's with those "sniper" Pinkies though, they can't really do anything besides infight with the Chaingunners...). That said, I still have some problems with it, but surprisingly enough, ammo wasn't one of them, I actually exited with a fair amount of ammunition left and probably could've gone back and killed the remaining demons if I wanted to. Luckily you're provided with a berserk pack pretty early on. What bothered me primarily was, once again, the progression and moving around the map, not just because of it being hard to follow, as was the case in Avenger, but also because of how you sometimes have to interact with very non-obvious walls to get where you wanna go. The aforementioned berserk for example is accessed by pressing on a seemingly random gargoyle face, which turns out to be a platform that can be lowered for whatever reason and you obtain the SSG (which opens the way forward) by lowering a random baron face. The ending is also a drag, with so many strange button-presses that I can't even go into specifics because I forgot everything about it. My favorite moment was cleaning up the Cybee in the somewhat cramped room with the contorted marble faces, it made for a fairly tense fight, though it's probably a lot less exiting if you use an Invuln on him, I decided against it and exited with one to spare. Without the gift of foreknowledge, this map would've probably been really painful to beat. Knowing about it's pitfalls, it was still only "alright enough".

Don't worry, I've not given up yet, I just wasn't really in the mood for writing yesterday. Forgive my poor writing rn, I'm pretty tired. Map25 "Blood Demesne" by Archvile46 Knowing about this map's ridiculous resource starvation, I didn't even try to go for 100% kills here. This did end up helping me quite a bit, I left the SMM alive for example, but my god is this map ever still brutal. That's partly due to it apparently not having been tested with infinitely high actors, that beginning is very annoying to get past, whether you'll get blocked and clawed to death or not is very much out of your control. The hardest part was the mid section for me, I had to do a lot of reloading, because of how absurdly little health there was, I wasn't really able to afford any unnecessary damage. After overcoming the weird fleshy room with the Revenant snipers, the map becomes a lot easier, but getting up to that point was pretty painful. Yeah, I'd be lying if I said I had fun with this map, but it wasn't quite as miserable as expected. Map26 "Breakout" by Kaiser Definitely my favorite Kaiser map in the set, it felt much less sleepy than his other offering, though it did also get the most convoluted in terms of progression. The fights here are fun for the most part, as the map's crampedness makes traps that would usually be trivial rather engaging. The visuals are also really good, texture selection, color coordination and architecture were all on point, especially considering it was the 2000s, and it stands out in that regard, even in comparism to Kaiser's similarly elaborate Map10. I felt there was a lot more backtracking than necessary, the ending is the worst example of that. After already killing every or most of the monsters, you're behooved on yet another switch / teleporter hunt, just to raise some stairs to the exit, needlessly padding the level out. Despite that, this was still a good experience, I'm interested to see how Kaiser developed as a mapper.

Map24 "Bring Evil Upon Thee" by Torn An uncomplicated, punchy shoot em up with some nice visuals, I'm very thankful for it's inclusion. It's just SSGing & rocketing big crowds of Imps & Pinkies, broken up by the occasional fun Archvile fight. It's not exactly clever, but still very fun, especially compared to the last three maps, kind of reminiscent of Jimmy's ealiest works, I suppose? There's really not a lot to talk about, I liked it and I think it's a good bit of pacing.

Map23 "Blood Runners" by Sphange This map left very little impression on me, which is weird, considering it's relatively long runtime. I liked it more than Map21, and that's entirely because of the progression being far less obtuse, I always had a pretty clear idea of where to go next at any point. The combat here was a huge step down though, imo, kind of similar to Map18, in that no battle really poses a threat, despite big crowds of monsters. The Pinky army in the main courtyard was particularly useless, I just bottlenecked and punched them all to death and I didn't really see a way of handling the situation differently. This map is pretty inconsistent with it's theme and I didn't particularly enjoy the looks of anything, aside from the neatly organic-looking opening area, I think Sphange could've leaned into that a bit more. Highlights? The BFG and the Plasma were fun to obtain, I guess. Aside from that it's not bad, just whatever.

Map22 "Future Grave" by ravage An appreciated breather, in theory, Future Grave is a completely unchallenging, weirdly late-game techbase. I think Bad Bob's map04 would have felt more at home in hell than this, if you absolutely needed to put a short, basic techbase in the 22nd slot. Combat & visuals are inoffensive, except for the occasional shotgunning of some HKs, which is kind of annoying. I still got a little confused with the progression, doesn't look like I'm the only one. Nothing special, but okay enough and a decent wind-down after Map21. You can get the non-secret Pinky & Berserk by pressing on this little indentation down in this area.

having some deep thonkghts

Map21 "Avenger" by Sphange Calling this map confusing would be an understatement, this was probably the most exhausting one for me so far, and I'm honestly unsure if I'll be able to hang on, with holidays being over and so many huge maps awaiting us. (Also gotta study for a Math exam, woo ° m°) Some positives: Good visuals, the architecture is a bit blocky, which becomes especially apparent in the tiny techbase portion, but there are some nice details and I dig that brown-brick, rectengular, castle-esque look in combination with the sky, it's a cool rendition of hell for sure. Ammo is tight, meaning a lot of oyur time will be spent punching, and the beginning will likely have you running around in terror, as you don't even have Berserk from the start and can't really engage with the numerous Imps, Pinkies and Hitscanners running around with so little ammo present, which I'd consider a plus, as it feels very deliberate here. Aside from that, the combat was okay, though the usage of turret or stationary monsters was pretty poor here. In a map as cramped as this one, they encourage camping more than kinetic movement. Now the anxiety-inducing part: The progression. There are so, so many little nooks, side pockets and completely optional passageways everywhere, which reward you with health, ammo or even optional weaponry, which is cool, I guess, but dear lord does it make the progression confusing, because it's not non-linear, there is a strict path to follow, but it's really difficult figuring out where to go, and you can get sidetracked so easily. No kidding, I killed over two thirds of the monsters present here before even finding the first key. This was not a good experience for me, I hope the maps following from here at least won't be as much of a maze. I can, however, see the effort and ambition that has gone into this and I wouldn't call Sphange an incompetent mapper or anything, but our ideas of a fun map are definitely quite different.

Map20 "Technodrome" by The Ultimate Doomer Wow, now this map is a lot more elaborate than anything we've seen up to this point, both in terms of combat and visuals. The opening, where you're scrambling for weapons while being hunted down by Pinkies, HKs and Revs was a lot of fun - though that might be due to the fact that I didn't know about those bridges connecting the four upper platforms, which meant I had to jump down every time and maneuver around the monsters, I imagine balancing over that thin bridge three times is less exiting. The wings following from that weren't quite as enjoyable. The crate area was fine, if a bit boring. That godforsaken blue, strobe lit maze full of Spectres, though, is a waste of time, eyesight and your punching skills: It's lazy and completely unengaging. The seemingly Caged-inspired room after that was quite fun, featuring some nasty traps and capping off with a HK / Archie / PE ambush, which made pretty interesting use of them shoot-through, impassible walls. The, I assume, nuclear reactor was easily my favorite part of the map, essentially just one big fight, which is surprisingly relentless with PEs and the leaky radiation suits were particularly stressful. The ending is a bit disappointing, I think the concept could've definitely been expanded upon, giving the player some lock-in fights to clear out as quickly as possible for example would've been much more hectic than just teleporting a bunch of monsters in, who you have to run past. I guess I also have to mention the voodoo dolls, I didn't think they were too annoying, but I also feel like they didn't really add anything and they don't fit into a non-abstract setting like this. A lot of people seem to dislike this map, and I 100% understand that, because parts of it are really annoying and it carries on for long enough to be exhausting. For me, the good outweighs the bad, though, and this is a massive improvement over UD's Map01. Overall, CC's second episode wasn't too bad, most of the maps were at least "okay" and some of these I really liked! From what I've heard, the final third will be very draining though, and I can only say that Map21 is a fitting introduction...

I don't think I've seen anybody talk about it here already, so I'm quickly gonna mention Snowflake: It's a browser addon which enables your browser to be used as a mirror for sites that have been censored in Russia, created by the people behind TOR. Sounds super-sketchy, but it's been recommended by a lot of popular media and even some governments. This doesn't help ofc when the entire country gets cut off from the internet as a whole, but it's helping Russian journalists as long as there is any form of internet access. Most of you probably know about this already, but just in case anyone doesn't, here you go. https://snowflake.torproject.org/

Map19 "Monster Mansion" by Gene Bird This one definitely seems more advanced than Gene's previous offerings, showing an increase in verticality and detail. It's far better than Map32, but Map07 still feels snappier and more focused to me. This is mostly because of this map's beginning, which is kind of dull, once again just SSGing random stuff. There was a bit more verticality present though, most notably with the little skirmish by the RL, which I welcome. There was also the occasional good trap, and the "city" portion later on was pretty fun and made engaging use of snipers, almost comparable to the boardwalk featured in... well, The Boardwalk. As I've already mentioned, the visuals have gotten a tiny update, now featuring some nice doorways and beams, making the plain corridors look slightly less flat. Overall, a decent map. I feel like there is still too much "whatever" between the legitimately fun moments, but I still had a good time.

Cool idea for a thread. When it comes to set-piece encounters, I usually have a kind of list in my head, with things that make a fight interesting to me and I try to check off at least a few of these per encounter. If I were to write down a list like this off the top of my head, it'd look smth like this: - Targets to prioritize - Monsters attacking from multiple directions - Height variation or turret enemies - Not too much space to run around, though that can be fun ever so often - Needing to employ multiple tactics / a fight having different stages - A time limit of some kind, this may be through damaging surfaces or timed monster clostets / continuous spawning of monsters - Some sort of additional restriction, like scarce resources of a particular type, darkness or parts of the arena's floor being damaging - Danger, aka some sort of punishment upon failure to react appropriately to the current situation I also try to pay attention to if I'm overusing a particular monster or type of fight. For example, Archviles can be used to make almost every encounter interesting, but having them in every encounter can quickly lead to redundancy and tediousness. A few popular megawads suffer from this a little bit, imo. When it comes to (sophisticated) incidental combat, which might be a very interesting topic on it's own, I tend to assign certain attributes to certain types of monsters, particularly their effect on a player when there isn't any, for lack of a better word, "artificial pressure" on them. For example, high-tiers or mid-tiers in bigger numbers will most likely cause a player to avoid them when they don't have any big guns or enough ammo yet, while hitscanners can "pull" the player into their direction when placed well, because of how running away isn't really an option when you can't physically dodge an enemy's attack, so you wanna kill them as quickly as possible. Placing a desireable item or weapon of some sort will also usually motivate a player towards that, especially when they've already encountered monsters who would be easier to dispose of when in possesion of that particular item. This definitely isn't the best way of constructing fights, having a checklist does limit my ability to construct truly original puzzle fights for instance, but it's what has prooven to work best for me if I want to map in a timely manner.

Map18 "Sudden Death" by Rex Claussen I seem to be alone with this, but I really disliked this map. It's a bit similar to Kaiser's submissions, but felt even more drawn out for some reason, maybe I played it on a bad day. The combat is sleep-inducing and tedious, mostly of incidental nature, but featuring some "big" ambushes, all of which maintain an infuriatingly low threat level. That first fight in the main hub with the trapped HKs and Pinkies is such a drag, even if you find the secret chainsaw, as you're not even given an SSG until later. After that, the map turns into a formless smudge of nothingness. I skipped a few monsters by grabbing the RK through the bars, because of how bored I was. The finale is representative of the map as a whole: A single, useless, trapped (?!?!) SMM, who you can kill by just standing back and spamming rockets, or pique-a-buh shooting, if that sounds more exiting. The visuals are nice and clearly the author's focus, some cool curved bows, directional shading, creative use of floor textures - but the map isn't fun to play, at least not for me. Obviously, I don't wanna call this map bad, because it's definitely competent and a lot of people seem to enjoy it, but, aside from Map01 & Map06, this is my least favorite in the set so far.

Hey hey, a double-feature!! I already nerfed both maps quite a bit after some testing, but if finniks' map is already deemed too hard, I'm sure these will be subject to change as well. Coop, DM and difficulty settings have already been implemented, though DM is completely untested. The first map was supposed to look like a merging of AmericanMcGee's minimalist style and Romero's architectual wonkiness, while the second one is more so inspired by Eternal Doom, visually. I already looked for slime trails, but I'm willing to bet I missed some. No new textures have been added. Submission Nr. 1 Map Name: Steam Up Map Slot: 16 Setting: 19th century industrial warehouse Midi: "Arch-Vile on Line 2" by Bucket Programms used for testing: LZDoom, PrBoom+, ChoclateRenderLimits Screenies: Submission Nr. 2 Map Name: Ghurub Alshams Aldamawii [ɣu'ɣuːb ʊˌʃams iːdama'wɪeː] (I don't speak Arabic, but this is my rough guess based on how google translate read it out) Map Slot: 21 Setting: Islamic Golden Age Midi: "Shadow Temple" by Koji Kondo Programms used for testing: same as before Screenies: Downloads: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jHwa11KP7edW-TT0QvYwvM59snoiUVRR/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oAN6YU2QqFR-xfqMEpLQ_wsoseaURw8H/view?usp=sharing

Just played it on UV, it's a fun, atmospheric map. I didn't have too much trouble here, the only fight that was a bit clunky was that Caco & Cybee infight by the red card. The Cacos are kinda helpless behind the impassable railing, and the only reliable way I got them to fight the Cyberdemon (which I assume was the intention?) was via the silver switch, I think a few blocking elements with which the Cyber could splash the Cacos more easily would help here. Otherwise, the combat was good, with my favorite being the finale of course, which felt like smth you'd see in one of MMs final maps, but more sophisticated obv. Visuals are also pleasant, did a good job at capturing that 90s spirit.