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dobu gabu maru

The DWmegawad Club plays: Alien Vendetta

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Map26
So this is basically IWAD map29 turned up to 11 (or 12 ...). Honestly while there’s certainly a lot of monsters thrown at you here I don’t really take too much issue with the combat balance: you also get plenty of firepower, health and armour with which to engage them. I was more frustrated with the map layout, which all looks very similar from “ground level” and which I found hard to navigate. This was compounded by starting it one day and finishing it a couple of days later. I had the blue key and no idea how to get to the blue door, though I knew I’d been there once before. I tried pretty much every teleporter on the map before I finally remembered the elevator in the SE corner and tried the gate up there.

As noted yesterday I think putting this back to back with “The Demon Hordes” is a mistake, and that the wad would be better served to change a change-of-pace in between them. Was “Valley of Echoes” also a similar kind of map? If so, the original release must have been even more of a slog through this patch of maps.

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Map25: For me it ties with MAP20 for being the most memorable map of the wad. The setting is quite cool and I really like the choice of the music, it adds a somehow dramatic feel to all the big battles that you have to face. I like also that there are some invuln. orbs that you can pick. I don't know why that easily skippable setup before the exit is there to be honest.

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joe-ilya said:

+ Hell Revealed 2, I'm having a feeling we won't play it for the longest time.

Only posts with three pluses are counted, not one. Also a quick reminder that if you're not going to vote, don't use the "+++" to say that.

Capellan said:

Map26
Was “Valley of Echoes” also a similar kind of map? If so, the original release must have been even more of a slog through this patch of maps.

Yup, over 1000 monsters and a whole lot of rocketing mancubii. What's funny is the following map (MAP27) is also a huge monster fest, which meant that the original AV had one of the most bloated E3 midsections I've ever seen. Speaking of the original MAP25...

Valley of Echoes: Yuup, this map deserved to get trashed. While the hidden SSG at the start kinda peeved me, it was the love of placing chaingunners everywhere that pushed me over the edge. New area? Chaingunners perched above you. Enemies warping in? Make them chaingunners. Hopping down into a hole? Not chaingunners surprisingly… just a damaging sector that will kill you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Then you have stupid stuff like fake midtex bars (thanks for obscuring progression Johnsen!), a rock wall being a lift, and that AV that comes out of your own ass when you pick up the red key in a coverless room. Giant wide non-threatening open areas close the map, where you spend about 10 minutes running around trying to figure out what the hell you’re supposed to do, cleaning hordes in a janitorial manner similar to Holy Hell. This could’ve been a cool map if it was more about optimizing blur spheres the way you have to optimize rad suits in a damaging sector map, but as it is right now it straddles the line between being boring and mean-spirited too often.

The good news is that I’m blown away by how bad this is that I definitely have to give Vorpal’s rendition a shot, since I’m curious what he’s taking away from the map (it has to be better, right?)

MAP25: Hoooo boy did this one take some time. This is one of those long maps that I find to be kinda problematic since it doesn’t have a good pace or progression to it (which may seem ironic considering my love of MAP20). It sorta just veers in one direction, then another, then returns you to the start, then has you battling through a bunch of cluttered annex rooms, and then a pointless final room to close it out on. Perhaps the most memorable part of it is that it truly is about demonic hordes which will stream in almost endlessly after every major event. Most of the fights are just circle-strafe tests, but there are some good moments here and there, like the occasional archvile or hitscanner to draw your attention. Sadly this isn’t quite what I enjoy in slaughtermaps nowadays (IIRC I was originally quite impressed with this map), and it’s one of those maps I felt should’ve ended about 20 minutes earlier than it did… I suspect the abundance of symmetry is part of the reason why I lost patience so soon.

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26: A rather difficult and non-linear slaughter map. There's some
thought on monster placement, I guess, but this is focused to make
things the most annoying possible: Why having 3 cyberdemons oddly
located when the best strategy is to shoot them from safely and keep
repeating foverer? Then you have these group of revenants behind a
staircase with cyberdemons located in a way that it's just not fun
having to deal with, the safest way is to shoot three rockets -> drop
down -> repeat until everyone is dead. I'm sorry, but this kind of
gameplay is not for me. Also, fuck that BK room. 4/10
BTW, this is where I give up, since next level Will have 900+ foes

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rdwpa said:

I'd just copy and paste that fight into its own map. :D

It's possible to use more cells and the hiding spots I guess, but that isn't quite as fun. (I honestly forgot the cyber was still shooting at the end, LOL.)


Thanks, rdwpa! Played properly, that fight actually does look like fun. It also highlights the difference between my playing and skilled playing. ;D

I think you're right about basing a map off this fight and leaving out the rest. Too late now, 'ey?

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MAP24 - “Clandestine Complex” by Lee Szymanski, Anthony Soto

Great map. fast paced and well made, with some cool visual touches and interesting layout that takes you up stairs, down sewers and over rooftops. I always get a bit confused once i get to the blue key, and there are one or two switches that aren't immediately obvious what they've done, but its no big deal. I think it might be one of my favourites in the set.

MAP25 - “Demonic Hordes” by Vincent Catalaá, Sam Woodman

I think it is safe to call this a slaughter map, though it still manages to ration out its hordes for the best part of an hour, a very long slog indeed. I like it though, even though it doesn't know when to finish and the fights themselves are pretty basic. Most of them are just a lot of monsters in a place, and the surroundings don't always lend themselves to much tactical play beyond running away and hiding. It has a certain blunt charm to it, and allows for some simple fun with circle strafing and mowing stuff down. By the end of it I grabbed the last key and ran to the exit, not sticking around for the final fight. There will be enough killing in the next map anyway.

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Map 25: Valley of Chaingunners

I remember watching a video of this map a while back and thinking "Damn! I can see why this was cut, it looks terrible!" Well, actually playing it I found the map to be quite fun. Let's get the big issue out of the way first: This map spams Chaingunners unlike any other map I've played. And I mean spammed, as a large number of encounters consist of nothing but dozens of copy-pasted Chaingunnners. This creates a somewhat binary experience where if you know they're popping in, you can take cover or bait them into serious infighting. If you don't, then you're guaranteed to take lethal or close to amounts of damage. As mentioned, the first part of the map is done in the style of Plutonia map 15, with a strong metal+damaging blood theme. Afterwards comes the more interesting part with some huge canyons reminiscent of something like The Abyss from the final level of Duke3D's E1. This is also where the slaughter starts with hundreds of Imps/Demons/Mancs and Revenants to blast your way through.

Speaking of blasting, I ended up doing most of it with the Rocket Launcher and Plasma Rifle since I missed the secret BFG. I finally checked Doombuilder for how to open that area which was visible on the computer map, and despite humping every torch there, the S1 trigger line is the step with the light in front of the torch. Ugh, so mashing use on the air before the torch is how you open those secrets up. No bueno hombre as the map is significantly more grindy without one. I can't imagine clearing that 8 or whatever Cyber island at the end with the PR.

There's also some weird progression, like not being able to get to the raised bridge and inside the central mountain in the large canyon area and being forced to run through half of the ending dam section to get back up there. Once you do, you're in for a real treat as the mountain tunnels are full of lame copy-pasted Chaingunners. I did like the overall sense of scale to the level and the water tunnel near the dam was quite neat. It's a descent map, but it's also long like Demonic Hordes and the Dome Thing. Makes sense that it was cut for pacing reasons as well as the unrefined, hitscan spammy gameplay.

AV Black Label - Map 02: Valley of Echoes 2.0

So Brad recently released two AV-style maps, the second of which being a loose remake of The Anders Johnsen Chaingun Experience™. Is it better than the original? Well... I can't say I was a big fan of this one. There are both positive and negative changes, but all-in-all it's pretty much a brand new map with rather loose references to the original. In fact, it doesn't feel much like an AV map. The pistol start is rather annoying here, mainly because the elevator in front of you with the SG and SSG uses a texture that looks nothing like one. I ended up running the map and kiting groups of monsters for a good 10 minutes before finding anything resembling a decent weapon with enough ammo. I assume this one is more fun with some foreknowledge as the freedom to explore and pick your own path is quite high, but that also means you can easily wander into places you're poorly armed to handle. This map also has a rather excessive use of damaging floors, that spread through the entire map and not just the intro. And radsuits are rather limited so exploring the toxic blood can end badly if you don't know where to quickly run to, like in the maze section. There are also a sizable number of snipers, especially the well-placed Cyber turret. Not huge on the elevator switch puzzles either. I thought the exit area was way too dark as well, but maybe that's port related or something. Anyways, like I said, it's probably a map I'd enjoy more playing a second time.

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I think we should play the Brutal Doom megawad [low pitched voice out side of mouth] yeah that sounds like a good idea [high pitched voice out other side] yeah I think we should do that

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Only if everyone agrees to try and play it with some other gameplay mod of their choosing and then complains it doesn't work :P

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Map 15 -- Bulls on Parade - 103% Kills / 100% Secrets
I seem to have a sort of inverse Salt-man Z thing with this map, in that somehow I always expect there to be more to it than there actually is--for example, I have a strange lingering memory of some kind of small dark stone 'maze' with cyberdemons in it that my mind insists on attaching to this map, but apparently it's not the case. I also don't believe I've ever taken the normal exit out of it (the secret exit is quite easy to find, presumably because the AV team really wanted folks to see map 31), but apparently you miss very little in doing it that way, save perhaps the one cyberdemon the level does actually possess, who (with foreknowledge) can be used as an infighting juggernaut in the southwestern stadium for a bit of extra joi de vivre.

While this is a map with a lot of authors involved (chiefly credited to Madani el Hariri), I don't feel that it comes off as particularly stylistically disjointed. Whether this is more of a happy accident or something striven for in the design is hard to tell, though, as the level has a sort of oldschool Petersenesque blueprint where it's a loose collection of concepts whimsically tied together, some of which are tried and true, ala the 'descent' sequence or another nod to HR via the short blursphere shooting gallery bit early on, and some of which are AV originals, ala the large phasing revenant field or the battle in the southwestern stadium area. Of these, the revenant field is probably the most memorable, but probably also the piece that makes the least actual contribution to the proceedings, since the venue is simply too large for the concept to bring any real heat, and so comes off more as an experiment for the sake of it rather than something that was properly tuned. The shaft-descent also doesn't acquit itself particularly well, as the use of two-deep 1x1 caco-holes sees the ungainly tomatoes trickle out slowly and awkwardly, and so 90% of the time the encounter completely loses any sense of the time pressure so fundamental to this particular set design, while the other 10% of the time it rolls out with obnoxious Z-axis shenanigans. I like the stadium fight more, though--it's a simple engagement, but the idea of attaching some kind of consequence to the common tactic of circling around the perimeter by having extra monster closets open on hairtrigger proximity sensors is a good one (which can be spun for maximum carnage once known), and assuming you know he's there, it's fun to pop out for a moment in order to drag the cyberdemon into the proceedings.

One thing that did strike me this go-round is that the level actually looks rather good, I think. Apart from the issue of the revenant field being a mite overscaled, what we see here is sitting in a very comfortable zone where it appears quite 'clean' without eschewing smaller details in the interest of streamlining--I was particularly taken by the little horned lion hatch, and quite liked the opening shot as well, lots of personality there with its oddly skewed starting angle, sergeant ganker, and oblivious caco. Generally geometrically simple, the presentation is made largely through texture choices and persistent attention to lighting detail, as well as regular shifts in physical scale between areas. I feel like this is the part of the detail spectrum a lot of later releases going for a really 'clean' look aimed for, with many erring perhaps a tad too far on the side of simplicity to remain consistently visually engaging.

Cool-looking secret exit, eh?

Map 31 -- Killer Colours - 100% Kills / 33% Secrets
One of Alien Vendetta's most famous maps, Gemini & Ebola's "Killer Colours" is one that has been referenced and reimagined many times through the years, including in "Warp of Time" from Hell Ground and in "My Fave" from the Japanese CP, both of which the Club played not too long ago. This is very much a map that hangs its hat on its aesthetic conceptgimmick, while the actual gameplay is shoehorned in through the limited thematic affordances thus created. Taking place in some kind of abstract interdimensional netherspace, the level is portioned out into three segments, each based on one of the three primary colors, in the order of blue-green-red. Most of the playspace is defined by tight knots of corridors, switch-operated latches, and smallish chambers. A totally linear walking tour (with one minor deviation at the very end, allowing access to the super secret exit and the skipping of the final fracas), the level is definitely going to make the strongest impact on players seeing it for the first time, though here in 2016 it's likely that most will have some idea of what it presents either by word of mouth or by having experienced one of its conceptual descendants. Its best asset is certainly its strange surreal visual quality--most recently, I think many of us might be able to grasp what is being aimed for here by remembering how we felt upon first seeing 50 Shades of Graytall--as the actual gameplay is not exactly the stuff of legends.

There's not a whole lot of significant thematic difference between the three segments beyond the obvious variations in color scheme, though the green segment has a very vague 'nukage temple' flavor and the red segment has some very light flesh-hell elements, but practically speaking each environment not only looks structurally similar but feels very similar to move about in, largely a function of a uniformly squat, tight scale. Enemies are sort of slant-rhymed in to each section based on color with cacos appearing in the blue area (blue mouths, I guess?), HKs and 'trons in the green (green projectiles, presumably), and revenants and cyberdemons in the red, with specters and demons sprinkled around where appropriate. Given the constrictive surroundings and rather choppy progression as driven by the network of switches and closets and further switchclosets, there's not much room for the action to be very elaborate or very expansive, and in the first two segments it's almost entirely janitorial in flavor. To give due credit, we can see the authors implementing little micro-concepts in the combat to keep players on their toes--your starting weapon in the blue area is the plasma rifle to sidestep the trend of buckshot starts, the green area has a light ammo management element and strange instant-death trap, etc.--but in honesty this is the sort of stuff you quite justifiably are going to autopilot through, forming few real memories along the way. The red segment flexes its muscles a little more through the conceit of stuffing disarmingly large quantities of skeletons and other riffraff into limited amounts of floorspace, with the first yard fight being the level's most involved encounter, allowing you to use the port-pits to blink from one side of the arena to the other as you drop your BFG blasts (having the cyberdemon alive is also a very viable strategy, but hardly necessary). The finale is another scrappy V-sphere discotheque bit, this one a fair bit nervier since there will realistically still be a number of cyberdemons left alive by the time you're slipping out of godmode.

"Killer Colours" is a textbook 'secret map', being founded on a novel gimmick that wouldn't really have flown if it had been placed in the standard running order. It could be said of many maps of this type that they don't age particularly well....is that true here? Well, the concept itself, being based on a purely aesthetic idea rather than a gameplay or structural/mechanical idea, is more or less timeless, and as such we've continued to see not only allusions/homages to this map but also full-on spiritual successors into the present day. Because the gameplay itself is so limited, however, the map's not a particularly alluring replay once the aesthetic glamour has worn off, and I reckon that would've been no less true in 2002 than it is now in 2016.

Map 32 -- No Guts No Glory - 101% Kills / No actual secrets
Another tribute to Hell Revealed, as called by Pirx, and one in a line of m32 selections in the HR bloodline to be an amped up homage to an older map (which is an offshoot of a Plutonian trope, natch).

The map's name is not coincidental; it truly is best to opt for blind idiot aggression here, at least in the early game. All of the cyberdemons in the first area can be telefragged (though as many have noticed this cannot be pulled off with any kind of consistency where the two perched sniper-cybs are concerned), and the many smaller foes can be handily BFG'd into the after-afterlife in big chunks provided you can find a position from which to efficiently discharge, which is something predicated on clearing yourself a space to work from, in true ZoI fashion. The way to do this is to collect your gear (the caged viles will occasionally dual-fuck you here, but oh well), immediately telefrag one of the cybs before making a sound (the guy to the north is probably the best choice), and then just slam your pelvis into every monster-wall in sight while you hold down the trigger on the BFG, beelining towards spheres and cells as necessary. You will either A) die or b) gain decisive control of the lower level in very short order doing this, and the skeleton legions tied to the two keys will be powerless to dethrone you, especially if you pit them against the two remaining siegecows on the side bridges, now your snuggly-wuggly pets. The perched cybs can be problematic to telefrag, as aforesaid, but there's enough ammo to blast them conventionally if you'd rather not take the risk.

The second area is simpler due to a lack of damage floor and the easy and immediate availability of safe spots to camp out at while you catch your breath (the two 'encased' cybs on the daises are presumably there to remove some of these camp spots), with only the cloud of pain elementals festering at the back of the area presenting a potential problem. This second half of the level plays more like a traditional ZoI piece, allowing you to proceed methodically at little/limited risk provided you've the ingenuity to see how to turn the various elements of the field to your advantage. It's certainly not as rip-roaring as the opening segment, and my impression is that it exists primarily to balance out the level's ratio of homagery to original content.

This level's fine, if more conceptually predictable than its partner in slot 31. Best not to take this one too terribly seriously, methinks; I don't think it takes itself too seriously (although I don't think this quite excuses the dicey RNG element involved in some of the designed telefrags, for the record). If you enjoy this type of play it's worth a look, but otherwise I reckon it's pretty far down on the 'AV must-see' list.

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Capellan said:

I actually thought the blue key room was one of the easiest parts of the map :)


I'm not Good in the game, but I guess you can pass by running in circles and spamming the bfg.

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Deadwing said:

I'm not Good in the game, but I guess you can pass by running in circles and spamming the bfg.


You don't even need the BFG. :) Running laps around the outside of the room generates huge amounts of infighting. You can easily do that until the bars open.

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Map16 – Mutual Destruction by Brad Spencer

At this point, I should call him Brad "The Serial Killer" Spencer because that's the effect his maps have on me. I've died more in Vorpal's maps than the rest of the megawad combined, and while at first it seemed that streak would end here, he still had a little something up his sleeve that resulted in Yet Another SteveD Massacre. :D

Okay, so obviously I didn’t find the secret exit to Map32 and instead I'm sent to the first of many deaths right at the start of this map. It was a fun death, too, thanks to all those Sergeants. I survived on my second try and overall I'm having a good time already, like I did on the other Vorpal maps. I like mean starts, I really do.

I wasn't so crazy about the phony grate as a necessary progress feature. We saw phony grates in Toxic Touch as well, and I remember how stupid I felt for going through them since all I got was Sergeants putting the blast on me and, at best, coming out with equal health as when I went in, and a few shotgun shells more than I had. And I did it on both sides, proving that my lifetime supply of Dumbass Pills is always ready to demonstrate how effective they are. I'd stop eating them except for that delicious strawberry-banana flavor. Seriously, you haven't lived until you taste these things. ;)

Anyway, the nukage drop area was very nicely done and stands as one of my favorite parts of the map. However, I went into one of my own maps and changed some walk-through Brnsmal textures into impassable as a result of how much the walk-through grate bothered me. In my map, I was just homaging E1M7 of Fava Beans and it was an area that was optional, but still, I think it's Best Practice to do things like make nukage always damaging or never damaging, and grates always impassable because there's never a situation in real life where you can walk through a fence . . . unless there's a huge hole in it. :D

Adam rightly described "The seven doors of tedium" that soon followed.

Then we come to that big Revvie trap. I really enjoyed it. It wasn't as big as the one in Killer Colours, so I was actually able to beat it on the second try. However, I played it several more times to get my health up before the next section.

Ah, if I had only known . . .

. . . that I would fall into exactly the same trick bag as the end of Killer Colours!

Okay, c'mon, guys, fun is fun but now you've punked me twice in a row with the same damn trick – Revvie horde that eats up all my cells, then throw my dumb ass into a room full of Cybs. There is like no mercy being shown here. ;D

The Cyberdemon Crate Room is really more like the final room in Killer Colours. There was at least 1 Archie, so thanks to him I spent a lot of time airborne while Cybs practiced their anti-aircraft skills by blowing me from one side of the room to the other. Whenever I managed to get my feet on the ground, I became a hockey puck for the Cyberdemon Canadiens. Props to Vorpal for hitting me with sheer sensory overload. I was completely discombobulated by my loss of motor control, but all praise to the Invuln sphere for keeping me alive. I felt like I was swimming against the current at Niagara Falls, but somehow managed to reach enough cell packs to kill the Archie and 3 of the Cybs – or was it 2? – before the God juice ran out. Alas, that left me at low health facing at least 3 Cybs, and experimentation soon demonstrated that rushing for cells made me a ripe target for the Splash Damage Demo Reel. And demonstrating the poor judgment I've shown throughout this megawad, I decided to kill all 3 of those Cybs with rockets and buckshot before leaving that room. Yeah, smart!

Before the ordeal was over, I needed morphine to stop the agony in my poor, tired wrist. What a circle-strafing endurance run that was! I also had to kill a few remaining Pinkies before I could use the rockets, which often missed. That means I did most of the damage with SSG, though on 3 occasions I did manage to snatch a cell pack, which brought an end to 1 Cyb and seriously damaged another.

I was more or less at the point of collapse when the final Cyb met his maker. I just stopped for awhile, paused the game, made dinner, watched a few restorative Miley Cyrus videos, and came back rested and refreshed for the end.

After the Cybs, the hell section was super-easy, especially since I read a comment about using the teleporters to attack the ledge snipers with BFG spam. Yeah, foreknowledge for once! :D I ended-up having to charge towards the Chaingunner snipers and run away to the exit, just like Salt-Man Z, owing to a shitty health situation.

I suppose there's a right way to do the Cyb room – rdwpa? – but that room really dragged down the map for me since beating it took So. Damned. Long. That seems to be an issue with Vorpal's maps thus far, just a need for chopping out sloggy sections here and there. Otherwise, it's his usual good-looking techbase with excellent lighting and some really fun combat.

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I skipped AV, and have been awol since about Icarus, but should have time next month to participate so...

+++ either rdwpa's suggestion of THT: Threnody and No Rest for the Living, or else gaspe's suggestion of A.L.T.

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Map 16 -- Mutual Destruction - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Ah, no wonder I couldn't remember this one as clearly as Vorpal's other maps. It is two marquee encounters--one at the beginning and one at what should arguably have been the end--with some additional 'stuff' to pad the rest of it out, again done in a utilitarian Deimos base style, this time more openly emphasizing the hell-incursion side of said theme, with rivers of blood cascading out of the refinery system and a little slice of Hell itself seemingly springing out of the planet's crust near the base proper. Eschewing the columnar layout of the author's earlier maps in the set, this one uses a basic hubspoke design in its place, and so the feel of the proceedings is more like a conventional PWAD map from the early 00s era (albeit one with unusually high monster density) and less HR-esque than its predecessors in the running order. The representational aspect knocking around in the background of Brad's earlier AV maps is also slightly more pronounced here, with the player needing to navigate a metal duct leading into the guts of the base's pumping system at one point in order to operate some computer equipment, thus restoring power to a nonfunctional security latch encountered earlier. I can imagine protests about 'mandatory secrets' cropping up as regards this bit of the progression....and as was the case with the metal bars in map 11, I'm not inclined to be particularly sympathetic, since the route the level leads you along is pretty clear and the space beyond the duct is small and only offers a few possibilities. In fairness, though, this is the first (and only?) time something like this appears in Alien Vendetta, and so it is indeed a bit out of left field in that regard if you're not paying attention.

As aforesaid, there are two encounters of particular note on offer here. The first is the starting fracas, which is incredibly cheeky from pistol-start, and I daresay seems like something years ahead of its time as far as its approach to generating early pressure goes. The trick is of course not to try and fight it out in the starting room (though RNG will sometimes allow you to survive this, occasionally even with barely a scratch), but rather to immediately crack the door and go dashing out into the primary access corridor in search of better armament and a better position, promptly found along the south stretch in the form of a combat shotgun pried from the stiffening fingers of a freshly slain marine. A notable wrinkle to this setup is that the vast majority of your ammunition has to come from the corpses of zombies as you (re)-kill them, and so when and where you choose to fight can make a significant impact on the battle's smoothness as the Barons presumably responsible for the demise of the SSG's former owner inevitably close in on you. I think this kickstart is a lot of fun, the sort of thing where it's not difficult to grasp what to do but surprisingly tricky to do it really well, particularly without the protection of any real armor in the early going.

The other encounter of note is of course the third (right?) V-sphere mosh in the maintenance bay just before exiting the base proper, wherein a sextet of cyberdemons must be dispatched ASAP with the BFG handed out just beforehand. Assuming serviceable BFG technique, this is easier to finish on time than the larger, similar encounter from the end of "Killer Colours", though if you've squandered a lot of cell charges earlier in the map (which could very feasibly happen versus the sudden and rather insistent skeleton parade beyond the yellow door) you're liable to lose a lot of time/efficiency in having to scoop up the bulk cellpacks inside the closets from which the big boys emerge (which in turn means you could be double-screwed if you happen to get cornered in one of them at a bad time).

The rest of the level is bloody but otherwise mostly unremarkable room-clearing, feeling much like the action from map 12 cranked up a few additional notches. I don't feel that most of it is too problematically sloggy or anything like that, though the HK closets in the northwest munitions store are probably overplayed. As implied earlier, I feel like the map probably would've felt cleaner/tighter if it had ended after the cyber-mosh, as clearing out the ledge-snipers in the hell ravine is not terribly entertaining (the farthest foes often gyrate around just out of autoaim range and the terrain's not really conducive to approaching them without undue risk) and the final encounter beyond feels a bit of an odd stopping point. It occurs to me that the segment's real purpose is perhaps to narratively segue into a more abjectly infernal setting; Vorpal's map 22 appears like it could credibly be a direction continuation of what's seen here (as in, the end of map 16 is literally the same place as the start of map 22), but given the gap between them this doesn't really seem to hold water.


Barring the sudden and unexpected emergence of certain megaWAD MacGuffins which have been sidling around in the shadows for the past 547 years or so, my vote for the next Club WAD is and will most likely continue to be +++ Hellbound indefinitely until it's picked.

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Steve: The right way to do the cyberdemon room in map 16 is to not pick up the V-sphere until after you've disposed of the arch-vile and demons, and to not have blown all of your cells beforehand. ;)

Map 17 --Nukefall - 97% Kills / 100% Secrets
Forgot to go back and kill the chaingunners overlooking the player start point. D'oh.

This is purportedly one of Johnsen's earliest maps, and I reckon its spindly, one-idea-per-room hubspoke construction shows this. Appearing in the finished mapset, it comes off as rather a quirky and experimental outlier, and probably could've credibly been passed off as the work of some other author, as it bears little resemblance in style and pacing to Anders' other maps, ultimately playing out as a sort of short--and rather stern!--situational puzzle with a few frills to pad it out (it's the sort of map that only makes real conceptual sense from a pistol-start, incidentally). Like many maps that fit a similar general description, it has a small-yet-ardent cult of fans, but I don't really count myself among them.

This map's Thing is certainly That Cyberdemon, who makes his lair in That Room. How to deal with him? There is no real space for a standard fight, no pulling him out to the relatively open surface yard to the west, and not enough cell ammo to pour a BFG doubleshot down his neck. The simplest way to handle him is simply to use his collapsing 'cage' as cover while you do a sort of impromptu Mexican hat-dance and carefully plug him with the SSG supplied at the start (the Barons down the hall will crash the party at some point, but will almost always be promptly obliterated by Cybie), which is eminently doable but nonetheless nervewracking for players not accustomed to this kind of close contact. I've seen, heard of, and yes, experienced all manner of other ways of trying to handle him (including not actually handling him at all, and the popular strategy of using cells from the temple facade + a dice-roll infight timer to cheapshot him with the BFG) through the years, since as an iconic mapset AV has been and will likely continue to be many players' first experience with encountering monsters where they 'shouldn't' be in a Fair and Balanced (TM) game. I recall the very first time I ever killed him (after several failures) I did it by somehow managing to throw most of the 50-ish rockets in the dead end to the north into his gut before he got around to actually walking down the corridor to corner me, allowing me to finish him with the SSG instants before he would've stepped on my head. Ah, memories.

The rest of map, though....well, it's silly at best, stupid at worst. During a speedy maxrun there's some consideration to be had over how to balance the tightly-calculated cell/rocket budgets as regards efficiently clearing out the revenant frat parties going on past the red bars and the vile sorority sleepover near the exit, but during conventional play every single one of these encounters is tailor made to be undramatically camped, and the squidgy construction in the back half of the level means that rationalizations along the lines of "you can play it more fun/aggressively if you WANT to" don't really fly so well here. There's some amusement to be had with the barrel chain reactions in the RK battlements (ride blind elevator, fire one SSG shot at the right moment, watch the hamburger-flavored confetti fly), but the level's not got a lot else going for it beyond its respectable handling of aesthetic concourse.

If we're in a charitable mood, I reckon this map's starting scenario can, like a number of AV's other notable design ideas, be fairly argued as something that was quite ahead of its time back in 2002 (though puzzle maps based on highly intractable monster placements have been around since the 90s, truth be told--they've just never been particularly popular!). Beyond that, though, this one's a bit of a dud.

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I also fell way behind, though I don't have a hard drive failure to blame my on, just being busy.

MAP17: Nukefall
78% kills, 0/1 secret

Yeah, the start here is pretty dumb for pistol starters, certainly a rude awakening if you've been playing that way. The cyberdemon at the start feels like it should be some sort of gimmick (like teleporting away or something) but nope, cage opens and you die if you're not prepared. Even after the cyberdemon it doesn't feel like there's any real help for a pistol starter. I ended up grabbing the BFG and RL while the cyber was distracted, running past what I could and eventually using the RL until I could reach the red key (which didn't even let me pick up the chainguns!) Thankfully the teleport back gave me a shotgun, and I used the rest of my rocket ammo to slaughter the revenants through the red bars (which are thankfully wide enough to fire through). Then return to finish off the cyberdemon and run past all the AVs for the portal, don't have time for that.

Even aside from the bad pistol start design, there's not much here. Lots of mono types of enemies placed together, and a lot of it is somewhat exploitable (shoot the revs through the bars, run past the AVs) and the only reason the map is quick and easy is because of it.... it would likely be a lot more frustrating to actually take those fights on, which is a bad sign.

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Map 26: Dark Dome

So apparently this is a meme map of Hell Revealed 24, only we've got nice clean water instead of damaging VD infected blood. Now, I strongly dislike Hell Revealed and its style of gameplay and visuals and I may have mentioned skipping Dark Dome previously in this thread. After playing it again from Pistol Start, it wasn't as annoying as I remember it being from my first playthrough. Maybe all the harder sets I've been playing improved my Dooming.

The map can be played normally without any routing or foreknowledge, aside from the occasional bullshit teleporter that warps you into one of those 50 Revenant cages. I think I watched a UV-Max sometime back and the deal with the central area is making good use of Invul Spheres to clean up the lethal crap there. I did that with one cage and then sniped another through one of those upper windows from the titular dark dome. There's quite a bit of verticality here so playing with purist controls will be annoying if you don't know which crap is shooting you from what part of the map. There are a few standout encounters, namely the circular water room, that annoyingly lowers the bars if you happen to step in the centre again even after everything is dead. And just like at the end of the previous map, there's a bullshit triple Cyber pop-in at the Chaingunner cave. At least their locations are marked this time, but it's still annoying with how close you need to get to trigger that shit. There are a few other instances of in your face boss monsters that I also don't care for.

Visually the map is ass with quite possibly the most boring and uninspired style in AV so far. It's a big, symmetrical square room full of orthogonal architecture and some rock textures pasted everywhere. Kind of like an HR map. The black dome is really the only interesting thing here while the rest looks like The Chasm without the crazy texture variety. This map is merely ok and I much prefer 25, 27 and even the cut Valley of Chaingunners to it.

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Demon of the Well said:

Barring the sudden and unexpected emergence of certain megaWAD MacGuffins which have been sidling around in the shadows for the past 547 years or so, my vote for the next Club WAD is and will most likely continue to be +++ Hellbound indefinitely until it's picked.

Out of curiosity, what macguffins are you referring to, other than Revelation of Doom? Millenium and Mordeth ep 2 were both officially cancelled, I thought?

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I'll probably pass on many of the larger maps from this point on. Homogenous directly placed blocks of monsters in visually unappealing HR-ish settings aren't the type of thing I like in my slaughtermaps, with the exception of some leisurely spam maps.

SteveD said:

I suppose there's a right way to do the Cyb room – rdwpa? – but that room really dragged down the map for me since beating it took So.


On top of saving invuls/cells, you can cheese it a bit by triggering the walkover line before grabbing the invul by moving reeeally close to it, which can extend the invul by probably 5-6 seconds.

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Map26: I remembered that it looked worse but it has few nice things: the black building, the green marble area at the end, and the blue key rom. It has also lots of verticality, which is really good. Gameplay is full slaughter here, and the theme is glaringly inspired by HR MAP24, Plutonia MAP24 and Doom 2 MAP29. I smiled at the pop-up cyberdemons, there are also other tricky placements of cyberdemons in very close space but when you know how to kill them effectively with the BFG those situations aren't a problem anymore. The hardest part is cleaning the main area at the start and create a "safe zone", the various archviles in the turrets were particularly annoying. I had fun with this level, more than what I though I would have.

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MAP26 Dark Dome

In the spirit of Post Mortem that preceded it, we get a map that, actually is easier than it by a lot. I mean there's no worry about damaging floors, but there sure is worry about this indoor amusement park of monsters being goddamn everywhere. Yet Anders (oh by the way, it's pretty much all Anders from here on out, with part of the credit for the next by Jansen) gives you all the stuff you need right on your starting point. How nice.

My first strategy was to just back up into the water right away, mostly to get out of that annoying arch-vile's line of sight, but also to go ahead and explore the place. The first place I go is to the northeast, where a few monsters are of trouble, usually the chaingunners to the south and on another ledge. But this area is relatively safe. A teleporter tucked away allows me to telefrag a few dickheads in cages, while I do whatever elsewhere. The first invulnerability finds its use afterwards; I get another secret, then take a teleporter back to the middle where I at least look for fighting chances before hiding again.

I basically encircle the whole center of the map killing all the border monsters in the moat as well as the caged ones when possible. The long moat to the south with all the staircases comes into play afterwards, but the mancubi, pain elementals, and barons come first here. Mopping up the northwest comes last, since it has a wall of arch-viles, plus a surprise hell knight ambush. The middle is honestly way more trouble than it's worth as far as cleaning goes, especially those fucking cages of revenants with random archies in them, plus a cyber on a far side. There are a few good vantage points of hitting those cages, but most are guarded by a cyber on one side (the one particular cyber at the east end of the central area really is annoying, for instance).

The whole southern section is setpiece-o-rama, and I bumrush the revenants first then BFG the chaingunners and the rest. Afterwards, the switch somewhere in a room of barons reveals the next area to go, the blue key water arena. Holy crap it's a fun infighting simulator, but easy to fuck up. I run around the outside but it could be possible to get locked in twice as long due to how the trigger lines around the blue key are used.

Following the blue key is a trip up to a room with imps, then a spiderdemon guarded by a revenant pincer, and then immediately after that is the yellow key. Going back through the same teleporter puts me in a corridor where the yellow switch is, and after finding the bar it opens, I get the red key soon after. Gee, that's quick. BUT, the most frustrating part happens that soon, mancubi and cyberdemons almost without warning. I found a good vantage point just south of the center though, and used it well this time. I always seem to die there too. After the red door, it's straightforward, but an optional megasphere fight can be fun.

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Clandestine Complex

The main inspiration for this map came from The Darkening 2 and Quake 2. There's my first attempts at a more 3D appearance using sky height variation* which is mostly succesful. As with Siege monster closets are kept to a minimum.
The map layout changed considerably during development and was being tweaked in the days before release. I think this shows in the Mastermind fight and the blue key room. Most people miss the switch for the yellow key door and gain the blue key through the secret.
The central crate room was pasted in by Fish from an earlier map of mine**. The exit by crate made sense in the original map but less so here. I think Fish put in the light switch as a gag.
The one shot lift was a poor descision which caused problems in coop. I liked the effect too much, I realised too late how easy it is to make it work repeatedly.
I've read CC reviewed as "a crap Hillside Siege", I find this a bit odd because CC features smaller, more diverse encounters and plays quickly. We ensured the armour and ssg were available early to encourage the player to play aggresively. I think CC plays well as a quick blast, maybe a polished VOE would have been a better fit for this episode.

CC could have done with some more testing and detailing where possible but I'm generally happy with the result.

* improved somewhat in Endgame and Crucified dreams
** this map is the base for kdizd map07's right half

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Map 26 - Dark Dome

What the hell is a meme map.

The third and (probably, Stench of Evil doesn't really count as one) final slaughter map of the set. Dark Dome is a candid tribute to Hell Revealed's Post Mortem in terms of architecture & monster placement. The floor is non damaging, of course, but the monster count is something like twice as much as Map 24 of HR. Of the three slaughter maps in AV, i'd argue this one is probably the most prone to feeling like a slog - this one has a real penchant for nasty, close up combat with a ton of meat to plow through, and thus it is the one that is most liable to force you to play slow & methodical, to grind down the opposition and gain a foothold. That isn't to say that you can't play aggressively - in fact, it's preferable that you do so as early as you can - but unlike Demonic Hordes, Dark Dome does not go out of its way to broadcast how you do it.

Unlike its salient inspiration, I think this map's bark is worse than its bite. That isn't to say that it isn't a hard map, because it definitely is - and it leaves an intimidating impression on first playthrough or ten. But, like how Hell Revealed rewarded you by understanding how that set's maps worked on repeat playthroughs, it holds true for this map: having a clear plan of attack in order to take out these entrench pockets of monsters is required. It's a style of slaughter map very different from what was just played in Demonic Hordes, or even Valley of Echoes if i'm remembering it right, in that while it's certain fun to play in its own right, the nature of its combat doesn't reward improvisation as much as those maps did.

The towering scale of this map is quite.. vivid, to say the least. I dispute the notion it's bad looking, incidentally; while Johnsen doesn't quite have the flair for detail that Malde did, for instance, the texture scheme - generally a mix of brown and grey rock blending together with heavy water texture elements throughout - mixes together exceptionally well, in a manner not dissimilar from Plutonia's use of greys and greens. The use of lighting & shade in this map is a cut above most Doom maps. More than anything else, the scale of the map is where Dark Dome leaves its greatest visual impression, and where some of the initial intimidation factor comes in. Between that and the pockets of nasty, entrenched monsters, it makes you earn gaining any sort of foothold onto the upper levels of the map, and the result is satisfying for it.

Mind you, this is a map that I still think could've benefitted a bit more from some incidental combat around the 'pockets', as it were, if nothing else but as a change of pace from you besieging the hellspawn. But ultimately it's still an excellent map. It's funny that it is a Post Mortem tribute, because Johnsen's creation thoroughly outdoes anything Hell Revealed did, at its own game no less. Of course, it doesn't reward the lazy player.

His next map though? Uh, not so much...

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Map 26 Dark Dome:

The answer of the author to HR map 24 and actually it is very similar. Thematically close to Plutonia map 24 and 27 is however, in my opinion, graphically slightly better then Post Mortem especially the details and the lights / shadows usage: the green marble final area and the caves with the waterfalls housing the cyberdemons triplette are good examples.
Exactly like hr map 24 this is a tough map where you have to move, shoot, avoid, heal all the time until you've created a 'safe zone'. In my case the safe zone was the big start structure cleansed of all monsters.
This is a difficult map but, like said in the text file, not so pressing on the player as Post Mortem cause there aren't pain sectors nor a big cacos swarm which hunts you until you have killed them all like happens in the Hell Revealed counterpart; also all the cyberdemons of the map can be killed from safe positions.
The blue key ambush can be tricky and I used an invul cause I didn't remember it well but it can be done without, and speaking of invulnerabilities there three of them available to the player to use at critical moments.
This is a well designed successor of Post Mortem, more easy, which I find superior to map 25 tho, both for the design and gameplay point of view. I agree with Capellan that a breather map among Demonic Hordes and this one would have been a good idea, maybe the same Clandestine Complex.

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MAP26 Dark Dome
gZDoom - UV - pistol start
This is hands down my least favorite map from AV. Talk about an annoying slog. Nothing visually to enjoy here either. I hated it. I focused mainly on trying to clear out some areas below before figuring out where exactly I was supposed to go and in the end I don't know which was more aggravating. At no point did any progression feel natural. Flip a switch, wander around for a half hour looking for what changed. Do it again, get a key card.... wander around some.

Waaaaaay too many Arch-vile's in this map too. It felt like half the time I couldn't see a a thing because there's just fire on my screen any time I tried doing something. Then I took a corner and there were 9 of em just hanging out on a ledge. Ugh. No.

As much as I hated this map, I appreciated getting all weapons and a 200 health/armor right from the start without even having to think about it. It's just a "Here you go, good luck!" kind of deal. Also, tons of ammo and health but that doesn't make up for how tedious this map's enemies made it. This was probably the worst slaughter map I think I've ever played.

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MAP27 - Stench of Evil
ZDoom, UV - Pistol Start, KIS(%): 100/100/100

Another level with hundreds and hundreds of monsters, great. But I'm glad that the first part of this level is a long, straightforward journey to the next fortress, unlike cramped pit of the previous level. A small secret that referencing the famous Nine Inch Nails easter egg of E4M1 was kind of adorable, although that chaingunner platoon was a totally different story. Speaking of E4M1, the overall design of giant marble fortress, which I want call "the second part of this level", resembles the fourth episode of Ultimate Doom thanks to the texture scheme, structural design, and brutal monster placements. But this time, we have some more slaughtering scenes with monsters from Doom II. A horde of barons of hell outside of the red fortress was disappointing; they're nothing but bulletsponges with nearly indomitable health. Thankfully, the next frozen passage with arch-viles and lots of blue textures(YAY!!!) was a good intermission area between those two fortresses. A monster infighting simulation with a hundred chaingunners right outside of the red key door was surprisingly hilarious, although trying to snipe the chaingunners from the long distance may be annoying. I'm glad that those mancubi are good at long-range vertical aiming. A nice level for MAP27 slot, I can tell.

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Hey everyone, so Alien Vendetta is almost done.

Map21: One Flew Over The Caco's Nest (Pablo Dictter)
100% kills, 100% items, 100% secrets
Time: 04:07

The third episode opens up with a very short and straightforward map. The progression is linear at best, and the theme captures the Inferno vibe rather well, echoing E3M4: House of Pain and E3M5: Unholy Cathedral. There's some neat little tricks here like the monsters rising out of the ground or pools of blood. True to the map's title, cacodemons are omnipresent, usually in pairs, though there's a good assortment of enemies. The soul sphere secret is cleverly hidden too. Not a bad map.

Map22: Rubicon (Brad Spencer)
100% kills, 100% items, 100% secrets
Time: 05:37

Another short and self-explanatory map made by Vorpal, which is a surprise since it seems he's mellowed out for his last entry for Alien Vendetta. It's appropriately hell-themed and has some decent action. There's some fiendish ambushes, but they're thankfully manageable, and you only have one cyberdemon to confront before you collect the yellow key. The final area has you battling a few more nasties in an organic room while you hit switches which eventually reveal the blue key, but then you got the hell knights and revenants that appear from the walls, and then you need to BFG the arch-viles guarding the exit before things go awry. Good map, albeit a surprisingly lower-key one than Map16.

Map23: Blood Sacrifice (Kim Andre Malde)
100% kills, 100% items, 100% secrets
Time: 12:46

Kim Malde's last map is a beautiful gothic-themed map which reminds me very much of the Gothic DM series. Although it doesn't hold a candle to the grandeur and phenomenal architecture of Misri Halek, it still manages to hold up quite well. For one, the castle looks very realistic, and as it is a Kim Malde map, there's so much detail and lighting that is done just right. I couldn't help but notice the section with the ramparts leading to the tower down might have been inspiration for Erik Alm's Afterlife from Scythe 2 where he does something similar in the area with that lava passage leading the mountain. There's three cyberdemons to contend with, and fortunately one can be coaxed into infighting with the monsters. The other two will be located in the fort area, and you'll have to play ring around the rosy with them. There's a bit of backtracking involved, but it's not annoying. Some secrets can be found by looking at the back of the switch walls you see. Enjoyable map from start to finish, and Kim Malde has rightfully earned my respect for making such atmospheric and engaging maps that rivals Iikka Keranen. I see a bit of resemblance in the styles between those two legendary mappers as well.

Gonna leave it here for now. See you guys later. Oh, and with voting for the next megawad, +++ on Hell Revealed 2, considering how several mappers who worked on AV were also involved in HR2.

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Linguica said:

I think we should play the Brutal Doom megawad [low pitched voice out side of mouth] yeah that sounds like a good idea [high pitched voice out other side] yeah I think we should do that

I agree with the two guys agreeing with Linguica, that's already like +12 votes?

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