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The DWmegawad Club plays: Realm of Chaos

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Map 09 - Machine Gun Etiquette

Detail: Wasn't too bad was a bit disjointed, however some parts looked really cool and very classic DOOM 2 (Military style bunker in the center surrounded by green sludge and hanging corpses.)

The room with the green pillars and the revenants was also very pretty.

Gameplay: I REALLY enjoyed this one, non stop dakka-dakka-dakka.

The area with the green goo I mentioned earlier lead to a very fun fire fight, hitscanners popping shots off at me, imps throwing fire up towards myself and the hell knight I was trapped with, simply epic.

Required secret... BIG NO NO NO, however its no where near as bad as some of the later levels of Wolf3D and let's face it, if professional map makers can make this mistake I can't damn it that much.

Also the SS guys were a bit out of place but that blue wolf outfit always makes me smile and I suppose they carry machine guns, so its sorta needed given the title.

Enjoyed it, and really love being part of the DWmegawad club.

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SteveD said:
I really really hope I killed Capellan here at least once. Inquiring minds want to know. ;)


I didn't die on the map at all. Part of that was reloading saves when I took a battering, but for the "flower trap" specifically, I didn't need any reloads. A combination of continuous play - I had the RL already, so Doom didn't switch to it - and running straight to the far platform. I runned down the two sergeants in front of me and then had cover from the CGs.

Looking in DB2 btw, you seem to have a CG and sergeant stuck in each other, on the south side of the RL, on easy.

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Capellan said:

I didn't die on the map at all.

Dagnabbit!!!!!

Capellan said:

Part of that was reloading saves when I took a battering

Ah, you're one of those guys, huh? Well, actually I do that a lot myself . . . ;D

Capellan said:

but for the "flower trap" specifically, I didn't need any reloads. A combination of continuous play - I had the RL already, so Doom didn't switch to it - and running straight to the far platform. I runned down the two sergeants in front of me and then had cover from the CGs.

Words can't describe how depressing this is for me. I've gotta go listen to some Philip Glass to get my Zen back . . .

Capellan said:

Looking in DB2 btw, you seem to have a CG and sergeant stuck in each other, on the south side of the RL, on easy.

And yes, ladies and gentlemen, yet another epic fail from the Steve and Rob Playtesting Team. Can't even get their own damned maps right. This has gone from embarrassing to flat-out humiliating. :D Ai yi yi.

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Tompig said:

Map 09 - Machine Gun Etiquette
Gameplay: I REALLY enjoyed this one, non stop dakka-dakka-dakka.

Glad you liked it, Tom, and welcome to the Megawad Club! :)

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Map 9 -- Machine Gun Etiquette
Another pretty fun little map. Gameplay reminded me for some reason of some of the Möller brothers' maps (some bits from their early work like Slaughter until Death, and MM map 22), in the sense that traps are a part of the progression and lead the player on. Nothing wrong with a few insta-raising monster closets (and the one with the HKs near the Mancubus was very unexpected and caught me good), though perhaps there's just one too many here. I liked the nukeage courtyard, the marble ledge room, and the start/ending area, but thematically the map falls apart a bit towards the end.

The fights were okay throughout but I can understand why Memfis had such a tough time with -fast, this one has to be *extremely* tough with fast monsters, and insane on NM. Didn't mind the SS troop fight as much as other people here TBH, and didn't mind the "secret" doors needed to progress -- the first one (in the Lost Soul closet) was opened for me by a monster, the second one (after getting the YK) looked just like the door to the RL secrets, so I found it quickly.

I did die once, having been pushed down into the ooze in the marble pillar room by a HK in the corner, which crept up on me from behind; couldn't find a way out of there. Apart from that, all the powerups, ammo and health kept me safe from harm. Interesting thing was that I reached that point of the map again almost three times faster on my second playthrough -- I guess this is the kind of map where, once you know all the surprises, you can tackle them much more efficiently. One of the better maps in the first episode, for sure. --3/5

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A little late to the party because I've been working on this 10 Sectors demo and it has been rather time-consuming. But anyway here's map 08.

Map 08: Research Lab

Yeah, this map gives some serious Tricks and Traps vibes with the it's layout and gameplay to an extent. Nothing special visually, kinda liked the way the bridge area looks but that's about it. On the other hand the design of that particular area is not too good as I too had some troubles noticing the small lift and with the bfg that area becomes a cakewalk to play. Other parts of the map aren't really that hard either. First area is meh although those HK's teleporting behind the player is a nice touch. Then there's the yellow key room which is very easy to deal with and not really that interesting at all. Teleport mountain is the definite highlight of this map if, and that's a big if apparently, it works like it should. In my playthrough I had a constant stream of enemies teleporting in and since I was unaware of the escape opportunity I stayed up there and fought back. Really nice little battle when played like that. The amusing nobles versus cyber vol 2 fight was an another good one. Pretty damn average map overall, didn't hate it but didn't love it either. Here's the FDA I recorded a few days ago.

No FDA coming for map 09 cos I sucked hard at the start but since it's a SteveD map I might record some sort of a demo for it.

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MAP09 - “Machine Gun Etiquette” by Steve Duff

Here is an fda:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/fy3xcwlfl4a3w84/rlmchaos09-mouldy.lmp

You may as well stop watching it once I get the yellow key because the rest of it is me running around in circles trying to find a way to the yellow door. I gave up in the end.

Having a look in doom builder I see there is a secret door to get out. Really? Or have I missed something...

Anyway, the bit of the map I did get to play was interesting if a little heavy on chaingun snipers. I would have more to say but I'm still pissed off about that secret door. Its a good lesson to learn though, and I can learn from it myself.

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Map 10 -- Hollow Oblivion
Tiny map, much too small at this point in the WAD, with a low monster count (I'd killed half of the monsters after less than 30 seconds). Seems to have been intended for DM? This should have been placed as map 5 or something. Setting is a small, outdoor complex. Gameplay is extremely straightforward and there's not much of a progression to talk about, nor much of a challenge aside from the initial scramble with a ton of hitscanners firing at you from close range ... maybe if you're very unlucky you could lose a lot of health in the Arachno/chaingunner trap.

There's nothing particularly wrong with it, what little action there was was totally decent and it looks okay, apart from some unaligned textures. No items at all, and no secrets (well, you start in the only secret, so technically there is one). Even though there's objectively not much to this one I have a soft spot for these short run-and-gun-type maps, which is also why I love "Scythe" so much. The two Revenants seem to be frozen as they ascend down (a pity), and the final fight should not have you fighting sluggish Barons ... I'd prefer an Arch-Vile (or even two). --3/5

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10 - -fast demo - very short map for a change. It's good to have one once in a while. The beginning with many hitscanners is interesting on fastmonsters. Dunno what else to say.

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SteveD said:

Ah, you're one of those guys, huh? Well, actually I do that a lot myself . . . ;D


There's a reason I specify "frequent save & reload" in my map01 post of each thread :)

I do it more than is absolutely necessary, frankly, but that's at least partly because it is often quicker to replay the last few seconds than to go looking for health (I quick save a lot, so unlike alfonzo I'm rarely cursing over not having saved in ages when I do die).

I blame the quick save compulsion on my job in the late 90s (where I spent several months working on something that sounds as stable as Hellmaker), and on playing Besthesda games :)

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^ I used to play similar to that style until about a year ago, and since have tried to cut my frequent saving in half. Now I just do it before and after major encounters or traps, although on some maps I still catch myself rocketing a pesky chaingunner and throwing down a save when I don't want to deal with that nonsense again.

MAP10: This one is a short blast of a map that is pretty relentless from pistol start. It’s super small and tidy but the opening rush is loads of fun to tear through and can leave you with some close calls. I actually cleared the place on my first attempt and wound up with 8% health, but lost that run to a spectre down below. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the damn spectres in darkness, this would’ve been an extremely solid map overall, but unfortunately I must demote it to “mostly solid”. That and the barons as end guardians isn’t nearly as threatening as that arachnatron & chaingunner pop up. Definitely worth a whirl if you’re reading this.

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Map 10: Hollow Oblivion

I found this map pretty groovy, but there's a reason for that: as I detailed in this thread of mine cleverness is one of my favourite things to find in a map, and this map has it. It could use less hitscanners and more heavy monsters, but either way I liked it.

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MAP10 Hollow Oblivion

Short, fun, rather unmemorable map this one. But I like it because it's short, although I got angry with hitscanners and used my remaining cell energy to blast them with a BFG. Still, I needed a breather after MAP09 so this is quite a good level overall. Final Time 1:06

SteveD said:

Ah, you're one of those guys, huh?


Over here! I'm a frequent save/loader myself. Forgot to put that before playing the first map. I even keep autosaves in case of extreme emergencies. I use the save/load feature anytime I get into bad predicaments. Of course, I still end up killing myself with rockets at random time like in MAP09. I should behave better with the rocket launcher, especially after numerous blast-deaths in Stardate.

And I don't plan to change that save/load impulse.

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Capellan said:

I blame the quick save compulsion on my job in the late 90s (where I spent several months working on something that sounds as stable as Hellmaker), and on playing Besthesda games :)


What was that job?

Funny you mention that unstable software is a factor in your play habits, because in my mapping habits, I still act like I'm on Hellmaker. I rarely go 30 minutes without saving a new copy of the map, because Hellmaker tended to bork maps if you saved into the same file over and over again.

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Hurricyclone said:

And I don't plan to change that save/load impulse.

Me neither. In my case, I like to punch above my weight class. I'm really not good enough to play UV, but with save/reload, it's a rare map that can stop me.

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SteveD said:

What was that job?


Writing business requirements specifications. The instability in this case came from being forced to use hardware that really wasn't up to handling documents of the size and complexity we were writing.

To this day, when I type in a word processer, it's "write sentence, save document, write sentence, save document". This also carries over to using Doombuilder, playing Fallout: New Vegas, and most other things I do on the computer. More than once, I've hit Ctrl-S or F5 while typing a forum post :)

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I used to play save/reload all the time until I came across Doomworld. Make of that what you will.

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Map10 (Continuous) – Hollow Oblivion by Jason Fowler – Kills – 100, Items – 0, Secret – 100. Time 7:53. End Health 97, Armor 140. Death Count - Zero

Map08 (Pistol Start) – Hollow Oblivion by Jason Fowler – Kills – 100, Items – 0, Secret – 100. Time 6:30. End Health 100, Armor 0. Death Count - 1

Mapper History

Jason Fowler was a friend of Rob Berkowitz, and unlike the rest of us noobs, Jason was a professional level designer. At the time he worked on RoC, Jason was under contract to Ambrosia Software to design levels for their 3D shooter game Avara. More information on Avara here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avara

I never played Avara, but I played Jason’s maps for RoC and really enjoyed them. Unfortunately for us, Jason was called back for further work on his Avara levels and had to leave the team. Although I personally never knew Jason, I seem to recall Rob saying that this map, Hollow Oblivion, was incomplete and just given a workable ending when Jason left.

Map Commentary

As others have said, this map is short and sweet. It feels like very accomplished work and, in my view, has aged exceptionally well. To me, it has a feel similar to the first 3 IWAD maps.

The opening area is good-looking and beautifully constructed, especially the central shack which is quite cleverly designed. The opening fight is a nice bit of “hitscan hell” with a pleasing level of violence and some danger if you make any mistakes. I made one on pistol start and rushed into the open, not realizing that a hidden Chaingunner was about to dust me.

The Arachnotron on a lift was a cool feature. On pistol start, I was able to start infighting between the spider and the Chaingunner who lifted up from the crate. The Chaingunner won. A potential weak point of the map is that a player can leap towards the crate and wake up the Chaingunner before the trap is triggered. In Vanilla Doom, infinite monster height probably blocked the player from doing this, but in ports you can walk over his head and maybe get fired on.

Jason gets more work out of a small space by giving you Revvies on descending columns. On continuous play, I fought them from the open field, dodging their fireballs and shooting rockets. On pistol start, I ran to the Medikit platform and chaingunned the First Revvie, then closed the structure and SSGed the other. Fun!

The drop-down to the teleport puts you in a very dark area. Glad I wasn’t playing on GZDoom! ;) The Spectres provided nothing but SSG targets, so this linear area was the map’s weakest point, IMO. After this, the best part was the Chaingunner Surprise when you ride a lift up. I took more damage on continuous play. On pistol start, I blew them both away with one SSG blast.

The end is a slightly sloggy battle with Barons and Imps. I could have avoided this on pistol start because I came up behind them and the exit – marked this time! -- was right next to me, but I chose to get 100% kills.

Overall, this is a fine map with a very fun set of early fights. Once these battles are finished the map goes downhill a bit, relying too much on shotgunning meat instead of dueling hitscanners. This might reflect the hastily-conceived ending. In spite of that, this is a very sweet, well-executed map, one of the best so far.

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Map 10 -- Hollow Oblivion - 100% Kills / No Actual Secrets
Cool name. Probably the coolest thing about the map, unfortunately. This reminds me of a Demonfear map more than anything, although it's both more theoretically dangerous (on a pistol-start) and generally less organized than most of those were.

There really isn't a whole lot to say here....the main action consists of clearing out the zombies in the main yard. The safe way to do this is to pick them off from cover, and the somewhat more exciting (but RNG-testing) way is to rush around and blitz them. The main issue is that there isn't any armor and relatively little first aid, so you can't be totally cavalier about soaking up bullets and buckshot at the outset. Once this is done, there's one semi-dangerous trap in the form of a commando that climbs out of a crate to fire at your back from close range while an arach distracts you, and then some piddly crap on the way to the exit. There are actually two ways to access the exit; getting 100% kills requires doing both, since one involves telefragging an otherwise unreachable specter for no particular reason, which allows you to attack the exit guardians from behind. The alternate route sees you SSGing a handful of specters in some dark, narrow tunnels. Easy peasy.

The architecture isn't very interesting, but the texturing and lighting are very reasonable, and 'realistic' to the extent that an abstract Doom map can be.

That's all I've got.

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Capellan said:

Writing business requirements specifications. The instability in this case came from being forced to use hardware that really wasn't up to handling documents of the size and complexity we were writing.

To this day, when I type in a word processer, it's "write sentence, save document, write sentence, save document". This also carries over to using Doombuilder, playing Fallout: New Vegas, and most other things I do on the computer. More than once, I've hit Ctrl-S or F5 while typing a forum post :)


Damn, you were really, really traumatized by that job, weren't you? Save after every sentence? Now that's extreme! ;D

This means I'm going to have a really hard time taking you out. Map18 and 19 have their possibilities, but I'm thinking a certain area in Map23 might do it. We'll see. ;)

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mouldy said:

MAP09 - “Machine Gun Etiquette” by Steve Duff
Having a look in doom builder I see there is a secret door to get out. Really? Or have I missed something...


I do apologize for that mandatory secret door, and I'm doing my best to atone for that error lo these many years ago. That said, watching both your demos of my maps (thank you!), and not wishing to be rude, I've had endless enjoyment watching you walk past one clearly marked secret after another. ;D Back in the day, it was widely understood that whenever you saw a vertical texture offset on a wall, you'd press it because that was a common way to mark secret areas, as per the IWAD maps. When I put that mandatory secret door in there, I made the texture offset really big so as to call attention to it. Same with The Flower Trap that hides the rocket launcher. I even put shotgun shells in front of it to draw even more attention to that area, which was right next to the teleporter.

As I've said before, in our crazed way of looking at things back then -- mine especially -- anything that made the map more difficult or inconvenient for the player was considered good. OK, so we were wrong about some of that . . . :D

Without doubt, the best part for me was when you were in that Brown96 hallway, pressing every square inch of it except for the two great big texture offsets! I almost fell outta my chair laughing!

My apologies once again, because that ruined a really good run you were having. I was especially impressed by how you beat the big outside area without rockets, and how you fought the PE and Cacos inside the guardshack much earlier than I ever do. So my advice, when you play the rest of my maps in this megawad, any time you see a vertically misaligned texture, give it a press. And there are no more mandatory secret doors in my upcoming maps. ;)

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Veinen said:

No FDA coming for map 09 cos I sucked hard at the start but since it's a SteveD map I might record some sort of a demo for it.

Can you save and reload during a demo, or do you have to make it all in one go? I've never made a demo, though I'd like to try it sometime, for my own amusement at least, but it's so instinctive for me to save before opening doors, taking a teleport or pressing a switch that I'd have to fight myself to stop doing it. ;D

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MAP09 - Machinegun Etiquette

Machinegun etiquette indeed... lots of chaingunners (and shotgunners too), but fairly well placed in locales that are interesting instead of frustrating.

Overall, I think this map can be split into two halves - everything before the yellow door (especially the big open area) and everything after. The stuff before is good - lots of interesting room design and enemy placement; there were many moments where I had to sit back and think about the best way to approach the situation. For example, in the marble column room, moving out into the open will get you killed from multiple angles. I wanted to rush to the outside and work my way around, but a hell knight is placed in the way, so rushing also gets you in trouble. Good stuff.

Not really sure why the rooms around the rocket launcher are tagged as secret, since they all pop open when you grab items. The white rock hallway was pretty bad... long, narrow corridor, topped off with some revenants at the end of it. I did appreciate the dark chaingunner room at the end of it though, as the chaingunners did not practice machinegun etiquette and happily killed each other for me.

The second half feels very much like someone's first map in 1996... lots of random room design, with texture use varying wildly from room to room. I don't even know what this is supposed to be. There's even freaking Nazis! The last arena especially feels like a letdown, with only a few revenants and chaingunner, plus an Arch-Vile you can easily run past. Was expecting a Cyberdemon at least.

There's a ton of items for the player, and early on I felt like it was deserved, since the vast amount of hitscanners can really needle the player down (though it perhaps needed a bit more bullet ammo for sniping enemies outside, especially the flyers). As the level goes on though, it becomes much easier, and the level becomes hilariously overstocked. Tons of armor, two megaspheres, three berserk packs, plentiful ammo... it's too much, especially since the last half of the map lowers the threat level considerably, with monsters always being in front of the player with little chance to surround him.

Lastly, having a secret door being the only way out is a big no-no. At least the exit was marked this time. 3/5 - the first half would be a good 4/5, the second half a 2/5, so it averages out into an average level.

MAP10: Hollow Oblivion

So, after finishing MAP09, I was going to exit out to write down my notes, but figured, eh, I'll clear out the zombies in the first room. And promptly killed half the enemies in the level.

It's a very short map, made even shorter by it's somewhat strange design choice of having two separate paths to the exit switch - either take the teleporter or continue down the hallway into the elevadoor. Little here is a threat, from the group of zombies to revenants being stuck on the lowering platforms to Barons in a long hall with easy cover. There's even a demon who exists only to be telefragged. 2/5

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MAP10 - “Hollow Oblivion” by Jason Fowler
This map exists for a minute then ends. Not much else to say. Completely forgettable as there is nothing really brilliant or blood boiling to this map. If this was twice the size it might be a good map.

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MAP10 - HOLLOW OBLIVION
by Jason Fowler

I don't know what happened, it ended so abruptly. Looks like there's a trend in the comments for this one.

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SteveD said:

Can you save and reload during a demo, or do you have to make it all in one go? I've never made a demo, though I'd like to try it sometime, for my own amusement at least, but it's so instinctive for me to save before opening doors, taking a teleport or pressing a switch that I'd have to fight myself to stop doing it. ;D


Well, I'm no expert with these things since I'm pretty much a newbie when it comes to recording. But I do know that if you save in gzdoom (zdoom too I suppose) during a demo it will continue from that save if you die. You can save in prboom+ too but it doesn't automatically load that saved game when you die. I would assume it's possible to configure it to load the previous save but I have no idea how :p And yeah I used to spam the save key not too long ago as well but nowadays I'm trying to progressively get rid of that habit. Still, when playing maps like Stardates last two I save very often.


Map 09: Machine Gun Etiquette

This is a pretty fun map and although it's densely populated by two of the dooms most frustrating critters, chaingunners and lost souls, the annoyance-o-meter doesn't get too high at any point. Like MagnusBlitz said, the first "half" of the map is the superior one with the big outdoor area being the highlight of the map both visually and gameplay-wise. Really good enemy placement in that area as the player is being constantly assaulted from several different directions. The following room with the marble pillars is nicely designed as well and looks nice to boot. The only problem there is that sometimes a chaingunner or a revenant gets knocked down to the slime and then it's nigh impossible to kill it. Wolfenstein room looks really out of place but the Archie & the Chaingunners -encounter makes up for it a little bit. SS-guys after that were certainly an odd enemy selection but they are just there to be human shields for the noble so why not. The Pestov yard in disguise was a really lackluster finale though so minus points for that and another -1 for the mandatory secret door. Hmm, what else. Well the RL secret was pretty neat and as it is I like the way Steve design the secrets in his maps. They seem to have distinct rewards in them but you always gotta fight your way to get those rewards. Have to agree with others though that fewer powerups would have been better and especially the last megasphere seems redundant.

But overall I thought this was an enjoyable map with good flow and decent challenge. Compared to Splatterhouse, this map has lesser visuals but more engaging gameplay and a less confusing layout. And here's the demo I promised: UV-Max in 8:41. Second exit, first was 8:55 but that was too reckless to bear public showing :p Botched the flower secret nicely and then looks like I flee in terror and fall down the platform in the outdoor area when I see a lost soul float by but that's pretty much it for the stupidity in the demo.

Map 10: Hollow Oblivion

I blinked and then I died. Seriously, I failed to turn around at the start so I charged the hitscanner hordes with nothing but the pistol and well that's pretty much where the story ends. Next try went much smoother and I finished the map without much problems. Not much to say about this really other than it's way too short for it's own good. Arach/chaingunner trap was neat but otherwise the combat was pretty average throughout and since the visuals are average as well this map ends up comfortably in the very average-zone. Double the size and it might be much more engaging. FDA.

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MAP10 - “Hollow Oblivion”

There was a map aaaaannnndddd... its gone.

It was alright, but too short to comment on.

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MAP10 - “Hollow Oblivion” by Jason Fowler

Catching a glimpse of other people's reviews I was expecting this to be crap but I quite enjoyed it for some reason. Short it definitely is, but quite concise as well. It had a shoot-out with hitscanners, a surprise ambush (which killed me), a dark tunnel of spectres and even a choice of 2 routes to the exit. Just like a real map, only smaller.

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