evouga

Absolutely. I’m also reminded of The Witness: Blow embedded the entirety of “The Secret of Psalm 46” verbatim as an unskippable cutscene as the final reward of the game, and people *still* massively overthought the game and kept looking for its “true secret.”

There are revenants in map16 which sometimes fail to spawn at the end of the first section of the map, spoiling a max run. Does anyone know what might be causing the missed trigger? I can usually coax them to spawn by going back and wandering around the soul sphere area. (This is gzdoom 4.8.2)

After some months of casual play, I finally completed all of the RAMP maps! Some highlights, all of which would have not been out of place as an entry in a top-tier megawad: MAP27: Brick and Root: I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this map; the overgrown-techbase aesthetic is engaging and there are some fun and very hectic fights. The red key area is far too quiet and you *know* there's going to be a major ambush---but surviving is no trivial matter even when you know what to expect. MAP63: LAMBORGHINI TORTELINNI: I'm not going to lie---the invisible enemies immediately turned me off to this level, and even in retrospect I'm skeptical that they are a net positive. The rocket launcher should be very helpful here but I don't dare use it in most places as the danger of taking a rocket to the face from an invisible revenant is just too great. That complaint aside, the gameplay in this level is fantastic: you're forced to maintain situational awareness of what the cyberdemon twins (color coded for your convenience!) are doing at all times, while strategically routing around the ring to build your arsenal. MAP74: Bashibozuk: This was the last map I completed. Not because it's the hardest (though it's plenty hard!) but I put if off out of spite after dying a few times to the archviles in the very last corridor! There are two very tough fights guarding the rocket launcher and plasma rifle that seemed impossible at first and required a lot of practice to clear successfully, but every part of this map can and will kill you if you lose concentration or get particularly unlucky. The aesthetics of the map are top-notch, with lots of interesting use of verticality. My favorite area is the flooded mine where you find the yellow key. MAP85: Night Lightning: Another high-quality map, apparently from the same author as Bashibozuk. This one is much shorter and easier, and is the purest routing challenge in RAMP. Figure out a plan before trying to clear it: a blind playthrough with save-scumming will feel miserable! Unfortunately I'm forced to give some demerits to this map for a secret that seemingly requires an SR50 jump over damaging floors (I never managed to make the jump, even in god mode). MAP94: Integumentary: Wow! I don't think there's a single right angle in the whole map, and all of those slopes, caverns, and stalagmites surprisingly don't interfere too much with movement or combat. The final room is jaw-dropping even relative to the rest of the level. The map ends with a fight against a pair of extremely lethal custom bosses; I do wish that they had been previewed earlier in the map, in more forgiving circumstances. MAP149: Golden Disorder: "No Health 2" is listed in the trophy system as the hardest map in RAMP, but I'm pretty sure I died in the very first room of Golden Disorder far more times than I did in my entire set of "No Health 2" runs. Golden Disorder is a series of brutal traps where even once you've figured out a plausible approach to each room, execution requires a lot of practice and persistence. I hid like a coward behind the exit pillar in the final room to take out the cyberdemons and archviles; if there's a way to play this room straight, it's reserved for doom gods with far more skill than me. A wonderful set of puzzles with a gorgeous aesthetic. MAP153: The Meteoroid: This map doesn't waste any time putting you directly in the middle of a frantic fight. Exhilarating from start to finish; I love the maze area that collapses into a grand arena, and the finale around the titular meteoroid. The timing of the traps around the maze room could be timed a little tighter: once I had practice the map a bit, I had to wait around several minutes for the cyberdemon and archviles to come out of hiding. MAP203: Party Crasher: Don't let the atmosphere fool you: the demons here party hard, and work even harder to kick your ass for disturbing the festivities. Another gorgeous level unlike anything I've ever seen in Doom before. The fights and traps are no joke, either; especially the up-close cyberdemon and archvile ambush at the very end.

Note that both the Porsche and the toaster videos and prank/troll videos. He did not actually get the Porsche/toaster to control the Doom inputs. (I knew the creator in person when he attended college).

How do you get the star in Map 187: Return to Seitis? There's a cube spawner in the final room and its spawns *do* count as kills. I don't see any way to turn it off. It's possible to avoid alerting it by not firing in the last room, but then, you can't kill the Barons and Hell Knights in that room...

Having recently played a lot of RAMP maps constructed with a wide variance in care, I want to emphasize the excellent point that “managing player expectations beforehand does a ton of leg work for a mapper.” And this signposting can be done not just in the WAD README but also in first few minutes of gameplay. I agree that one-way passages, permanently missable secrets, fights that are impossible without planning, etc. are not unfair *per se.* But there’s a big difference between a map that drops me immediately into a fierce scramble for weapons and resources (indicating that this is a map where I’ll need to learn the ins and outs and plan a route before hoping to clear it) and one where the first 45 minutes involve leisurely exploring a 1500-monster wide-open world. A sudden one-way teleporter, or instant-death trap, would feel like fair game in the former map but would leave me mighty peeved if it happened at the very end of the second map. I will also say this: I play maps to MAX them. I understand that any% is also a totally valid game mode and there’s nothing wrong creating maps specifically for any%. But I won’t enjoy them and won’t spend much time learning them if they’re designed to be impossible to MAX (even with proper routing and planning). Just a personal preference :shrug:

I think Ancient Aliens should be above AV and HR. Hell Revealed is an interesting case: it has a reputation for being difficult but the first and last third of the WAD is actually pretty easy, and the difficulty of the middle third is more due to its “puzzle box” gameplay than more modern WADs that put you in a sequence of setpiece fights that demand good technique. For example City in the Clouds or Post Mortem will be absolutely miserable if you try to complete them blind with saves; you will learn nothing from this. Hell Revealed is all about routing and once you understand this even Post Mortem is not too hard. In fact if you know what you’re doing Post Mortem requires less technique to execute successfully than AV’s Dark Dome (though map for map the rest of AV is significantly easier than the rest of HR). Ancient Aliens like HR had fluctuating difficulty but its easiest maps are harder than HR’s easiest and its hardest are comparable to HR’s hardest (AA map28 is no joke). Eviternity has two outlier marathon maps that are hard simply because of their length, compounding the chance of a run-ending mistake. Exclude those two maps (or allow one or two checkpoints) and I’d put Eviternity below AV.

1. Hell Revealed is a great WAD and City in the Clouds (from pistol start) is one of the greatest maps of all time 2. Hexen is the best of the Doom-clones and the hub system in Hexen/Strife is a significant improvement over linear level orders.

> At least this was the most promising and intended strategy. Thanks, I'll give that a try! It seems better than my current "Archvile jump over the Revenant horde" approach :) > Other than that I hope you had fun playing my... thing. To be honest, it's probably the most aesthetically stunning map I've played so far in RAMP. In terms of gameplay, I especially like the design of the blue key room---just a few well-placed enemies make for a vicious puzzle that requires careful positioning and planning. Thanks for contributing!

I had a *lot* of trouble with the opening part of Barrels o' Fun. I remember Gotcha! also being a struggle, with its really nasty Chaingunner ambush... I think E4M1 gave me the most trouble in Ultimate Doom. I kept running out of ammo and had to try to punch the NIN barons to death.

Instead of firing at nothing, I think it's better to shoot at the chaingunners while retreating behind the Mancubus. If you do this quickly enough you won't take damage from the Chaingunners, but also guarantee that they shoot the Mancubus so you don't eat a volley of fireballs.

Any hints for Golden Disorder (map149)? I've been trying to max it and it has been savaging me... Hardest part for me is the yellow key room; I seem to able to survive only about 1 out of 3 tries there. The other rooms are not as bad once I have the rocket launcher but plenty can go wrong in any of them. I don't know if it's intended to cower behind the exit pillar in the last area... the fight seems completely hopeless otherwise...

I am having an issue when running MAP32 where sometimes a Mancubus refuses to spawn into the level. The Mancubus is supposed to appear near the door to the red building (where the Cyberdemon initially lurks, green circle on the automap). But for some reason he's not teleporting from his off-screen holding pen (red circled area). Does anyone know how to trigger the Mancubus to go through? It's a bummer to run the entire level and end up one kill short... I'm using GZDoom if that matters.

I just finished this really fantastic WAD. F3 is the standout map of the set, but every episode had some excellent maps with frantic set-piece fights and stunning aesthetics. E4, W3, F1, and F4 are some of my other favorites. The bossfights were well-implemented and a nice change of pace from standard mapping. The water god was my favorite. The bullet hell phases of the fire god are great (they seem impossible at first, then when you learn the patterns you can complete them taking zero damage) but size of the arena, and the fact that it's pretty much impossible to maintain a sense of orientation during the fight, makes hunting for ammo and megaspheres during the "chase" phases frustrating.

That you for this fantastic WAD! I had great fun playing through it. At first I was worried the game would be too easy, but the difficulty nicely ramps up (with some of the final episode maps being quite brutal!) The level design is top-notch in the final episode, too. A couple of quality of life suggestions, if you decide to do another update: 1. It would be useful to see the par time somewhere on the HUD, to know if you're on track for getting the bonus (for instance, maybe by having the HUD count down from the par time, instead of up?) 2. It's hard to use the flamethrower potion effectively, since the lingering flames block visibility and make it hard to dodge incoming projectiles. 3. The last crystal ball in Dinotopia is evil! If you try to jump you can easily hit your head on the ceiling and miss the crystal ball. You can hit it by running out of the window, but if you are too cautious, you again will miss the ball (and then have to waste a lot of time making your way back to it again).

Not a problem. I can confirm that Scythe II scores are working now.

Something seems to be bugged with the high score table.. I just set high scores for the first two levels of Scythe II, and even though in-game it shows my scores as being the online high score, they don't appear on either the high score table itself or the list of "recently set high scores."

I finally got around to playing this WAD again, and have just completed it, on UV MAX. Here's some feedback. Overall, a wonderful megawad. Some favorite maps: Sledge: The first difficult "slaughter-style" map. Ammo gets tight towards the middle of the map -- after picking up the first of the two left/right keys -- but otherwise the level flows well and the fights aren't too difficult. A pet peeve, though: 100% items isn't possible without a (not very profitable) Archvile jump (see above). 666: I love the atmosphere here, particularly the starting outdoor area and the black pillar room in the dead center of the map. The *huge* outdoor areas to the side are kind of meh... there's so much room to maneuver that the enemy hordes aren't that threatening here. The Pyramid of Death: I've heard people call this map "impossible," which is puzzling since it isn't even the hardest map in Speed of Doom... I'd put Map23, Map29, and maybe even Map26 over this one. To be fair, surviving the blue key area requires a bit of good luck, as it's easy for the Archviles to fail to cooperate, or to miss the Invulnerability during the Archvile jump (by getting hit with too many Archvile blasts at once, for instance). The rest of the map is not all that hard though: health and ammo are everywhere, and the monsters are positioned in a way that it's extremely easy to start them infighting at very little risk to the player. The Shrine: A surprisingly tough map, given its small size. It's a war of attrition all the way through: Chaingunners, Revenants, the slime floor, etc whittle away your health and there isn't much around to pick up. The Path to Hell: Brilliant! My second-favorite level of the WAD. The gameplay in all parts of the level is wonderfully balanced (except the very end, perhaps, which is rather easy... but the atmosphere of hell's gate opening, revealing its huge hordes, makes up for it), with lots of good cramped fights in both side key areas. The architecture here is also top-notch. Poison Ivy II: This map is murder from pistol start, and no part of the level truly becomes safe until the very end. I want to particularly praise the placement of the Cyberdemon on the exit pillar as best in the WAD: from its perch it can snipe at you almost everywhere and keeps you constantly on your toes. You can choose to kill it early... but if you do, once the Archviles and Revenants pop in you'll wish you'd kept him around! A great, hard level requiring significant planning to survive. Blessed Hellscape: "Twilight Massacre lite," but harder and more fun since ammo is scarcer (at least until the very end) and space a lot more cramped. A great map. Hais Temple: The best architecture of the WAD. The initial fight in the center of the map is also tremendously fun: enemies are firing at you from every angle, and it's impossible to get at one group without exposing yourself to the others from across the courtyard. The outdoor fight on the way to the blue key, with the Cacodemons and Pain Elementals flying in as you're trying to deal with the Cyberdemon and his minor demon escorts, is also very well designed. The rest of the level is not without its flaws, though; the red key wing is too easy, the Cyberdemon guarding the switch in the blue key wing is rather gratuitous, and the Cyberdemons that teleport into the central yard at the end can be sniped from above with minimal risk. Some low points: Resurrection: I don't like playing Tyson-style, so this map is not for me, as I realized after punching out the four Archviles in a row at the very beginning of this map. Still... ugh. At least the level is short. Hell's Honeycomb: The map itself is fine... but I have to call out the most gratuitous Cyberdemon placement of all time, in the Megasphere secret area. Shame! Twilight Massacre: Don't get me wrong, I love a Resistance is Futile-style map as much as the next guy... but when the biggest danger in a map is catching a stray rocket due to lag, you are doing something wrong. Limiting the amount of the level visible at any one time by putting in more floor-to-ceiling cliffs would have solved the lag problem while hurting gameplay very little. A pity. PS: I really hoped the green area at the start was a scale model of the entire level... but it doesn't seem so :-/ Darkness Without End: Meh. I hate gimmick Map30s, and this one is no better or worse than average.

One thing you can do is make every level exit a death exit.

I almost always play WADs from pistol start. I find that playing straight through destroys the careful balance and design of later maps in the WAD: usually the levels become a whole lot easier than intended, since the author cannot effectively plan for the extreme variation in ammo/health that has been hoarded over previous levels. Sometimes levels become impossible, if you entered with too little health, though this is rare. Hell Revealed's City in the Clouds is a perfect example of a level that becomes dramatically less fun if you enter with a full arsenal.

Exciting. Any ETA on version 3.0?

There are definitely local high scores. But maybe when you play online, those scores don't also get saved to your local profile?

Yeah, about. Some of them fly, too, which can make Doom II Map06 very... interesting ;)

Ah, cool! I was looking at the hardcore boards.

Any plans to try some of the classic PWADs like HR or AV? I'd be very impressed with a no-infighting HR run... some of the maps like Last Look at Eden and Afterlife at first glance seem to me like they'd be completely impossible... but maybe if you bring in enough ammo from previous levels?