Solarn

Just watched a video of a full playthrough of map 20, because I haven't been able to beat it yet, and this feels like a look back on everything that came before. The aesthetics for the most part are very new Sunder, with a stronger sense of "this is a specific place", but it's also the map with the most obvious Ribbiks influences, with the dark metal contrasted with colored lights, and the final arena could have come straight out of Sunlust. The gameplay of the main "city" portion reminds me a lot of old Sunder however, with the central building feeling like a redo of Hive Mother's central arena, now including the actual Hive Mother, and other parts being reminiscent of fights in The Cage, Precarious and the big open arenas filled to the brim with hordes of monsters, with the switches needed to open progression tucked away at the backs of monster closets in maps like Hollow Icon, The Furnace or the final room of Metal Descendants. All in all, very atmospheric and I can't wait to actually finish it, however long it will take.

Wow, an intro sequence parodying what chuds think feminism is. What an "original" "joke". Imagine still being an MRA in the year 2020.

Just finished MAP18 (none of the others yet), and it was really fun, but I managed to get stuck. After clearing the hive area, I went back to get the megasphere that I left in the first arena (with the four hive mothers), and I couldn't get back out, as the way forward was blocked. I had to reload an earlier save. I really liked the different aesthetics for the three key areas. My favorite was probably the TV one, because it felt like an area from a horror map. I also like the new style of window that you're putting in the newer maps. In this map especially, it felt like something has melted holes in the metal walls not long before I arrived and the edges are still red hot.

I keep reading that title screen as BRANDON and thinking "who is Brandon and why does he get to have a WAD named after him?"

Apart from the already mentioned ones: Sunlust Slaughterfest 2012 and 3 (SF2011 is much more of a mixed bag) Crumpets Swim with the Whales Stardate 20x6 and 20x7 Water Spirit New Gothic Movement 1 and 2 Phmlspd Toilet of the Gods World Orifice

Hedon's final released version is also standalone, and a pretty authentic retro FPS experience, occasionally wonky sprites and all.

Believe me, a lot of us are looking forward to DVII as well. Sunder may have been the inspiration for the mappers who kicked off the slaughtermap revival that's still going strong, but DVII was the inspiration for Sunder and its stylistic influence can still be felt in many current slaughtermaps. I'm very interested in what the new maps will be like, with the added experience of the years since you last worked on it, and the knowledge of everything that came afterwards.

Oh wow, that looks amazing. Glad to have you back, and glad that you haven't lost your touch.

I'm in.

Well, there's a new Twitch channel I need to follow.

I didn't know that, that explains so much and makes the platforming part so much easier, now that I know that I just need to skirt the edges of the platforms.

I'm not actually sure it's possible for me to complete map01 on UV. It seems completely random how often the hurtfloor on the pillars at the start activates, sometimes I have time to get to the third platform and position myself before I start taking damage, but sometimes it's already damaged me twice when I get there.

It looks like a Quake 3 map, which is an amazing feat for Doom, even GZDoom.

I'm in a weird position here, because the maps I remember the most from Sunder are the ones everyone else forgets (The Dreaming Garden and The Grinder), but if we consider the things that inspired later slaughtermappers (the monumental architecture viewed from afar that resolves into a series of intricately-designed setpiece arenas when approached, the use of textures to suggest colour and material rather than detail, the ever-escalating scale of combat), then it has to be either Pale Monument or The Furnace. Personally, I'd actually have picked The Furnace simply because of how many outright imitators it has, to the point that almost every slaughter megawad has a map that's just "The Furnace done by a different mapper", but Pale Monument is more visually interesting.

God, waiting for this is going to be torture. From the video, it seems that John has already fully assimilated modern mapping practices into his style, which wasn't the case in his E1M4 and E1M8 replacements, and it makes me want to play these maps so much.